Alain Badiou's recent monograph on Deleuze argues that the latter does not reverse Platonism but instead presents a Platonism of the virtual which appears in his unswerving attention to the univocity of being, and for this reason Deleuze is not truly a thinker of multiplicity but of the One. But this interpretation, which is not unknown in Deleuze literature, rests upon a mistaken conflation of the univocity of being with the Oneness of being. This paper reconstructs the medieval Aristotelian debates (...) around univocity and analogy as they relate to Deleuze's thesis, found primarily in Difference and Repetition, in order to show that Deleuze does indeed reverse Platonism and restore the rights of simulacra and multiplicity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper I shall tackle the problem of differentiating Deleuze and Derrida. Various writers have done so, comparing these philosophers’ conceptions of repetition and difference. I shall attempt to enrich, sharpen and sometimes criticize these writers by exploring the paradigm through which Deleuze and Derrida have reflected upon repetition and difference in the first place: the mise en abyme, a literary concept designating a work that doubles itself within itself. I shall argue that Derrida applied to his theory of (...) difference a degenerated picture of the mise en abyme, which I shall term the “lacunal”, and which would cause him, against himself, to grasp the concept of difference “logocentrically”. On the other hand, Deleuze – attending to the actual emblem and to what literary theorists had to say about it – drew its correct lesson: the Other is less that which challenges Totality than the very coexistence between the Other-than-Totality and the Totality it challenges. (shrink)

This aim of this study is to investigate the manner in which Deleuze’s individual and collaborative work can be productively understood as being concerned with the question of living well, where it will be suggested that living well necessitates that we not only become aware of, but that we also explore, the forever renewed present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment brings. In particular, this study will make an original contribution to existing Deleuzian studies by arguing that what legitimises (...) this conception of living well, and what can motivate us to engage in such a practice, is that a life that becomes aware of and explores the open field of present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment engenders is a life that reflects, or that is lived in accordance with, the challenging ontological account that can be discerned throughout Deleuze’s individual and collaborative work; a life lived in accordance with his open, dynamic and thoroughly temporal theory of Being or what I will suggest he came to refer to simply as ‘Life’. In addition, I will argue that in so far as each individual human being is to be understood as an ongoing and immanent expression of Life, an immediate expression of Life understood as a universal, impersonal and pre-individual dynamism, then a life that strives to explore the forever renewed present possibilities for living otherwise that each moment brings - a practice that I shall propose also necessitates that each individual strives to resist the diverse ways in which their present possibilities are continually hindered, thwarted and negated - is not only a life that strives to live in accordance with the temporal dynamism of Life, but is also a life lived in accordance with our own dynamic and thoroughly temporal being. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Gilles Deleuze, as philosopher, reader, and critic, recognised the central importance of a defined authorial subjectivity, closely associated with a philosophical or intellectual project, and that his analyses of philosophy, literature, visual art and cinema were shaped and determined by his recognition of that authority. In this respect, my reading challenges those critics who find in the work of Deleuze an assault on ‘author-centric’ interpretations of texts, and more generally on the concept of a unified self, (...) and which uphold experimentation on the part of the reader or critic rather than interpretation. I argue that Deleuze has a coherent and meaningful conception of an author as a consciousness which persists through time, learns, plans and makes projects, differentiates itself from the work of other authors, is inspired and creative, takes positions in relation to the inheritance of artistic and philosophical traditions, and which is capable of entering into collaboration with others. Through close reading of Deleuze’s texts, I demonstrate that he consistently relies on the authorial function to impose unity and coherence on the distinctive - and often remarkable - body of work of an individual theorist or practitioner. I argue that the historical, political and social situation of an author is of great importance to the analysis of a text. Finally, unlike Roland Barthes or other critics invested in the ‘death’ or displacement of the author, I argue that Deleuze considers the competing interpretations of a text advanced by the reader or spectator to be of little or no importance. (shrink)