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GILLES DELEUZE

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AFFECT METHODOLOGIES – GILLES DELEUZE

Background information

Gilles Deleuze – 1925-1995, Paris, France

Philosophy and works:

• Historical monographs: Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Bergson, Foucault, Leibniz

• Metaphysics – a metaphysical treatise “Difference and Repetition” (1968)

• Philosophy of change and becoming, “rhizomatic”/collaboration with Guattari: “ Anti- Oedipus” (1972), “ A Thousand Plateaus” (1980), “What is Philosophy ?” (1991)

Deleuze’s ideas are connected and have been applied to :

• architecture• art• urban studies• geography• film studies• musicology• anthropology• gender studies• literary studies• politics

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Main characteristics of Deleuze’s philosophy

But also, some concepts must be indicated by an extraordinary and sometimes even barbarous or shocking word,whereas others make do with an ordinary, everyday word that is filled with harmonies so distant that it risks beingimperceptible to a nonphilosophical ear. Some concepts call for archaisms, and others for neologisms, shot throughwith almost crazy etymological exercises …

(Deleuze and Guattari “What is Philosophy”)

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AFFECT METHODOLOGIES – GILLES DELEUZE

Affect

What does an affect mean in Deleuze’s philosophy?

For Deleuze, affects are not to do with “signification” or “meaning” as such, but they occur on a different asignifyingregister. The realm of affect is positioned as an unreachable (and unsayable) origin – the “before” of language.

In the book “Deleuze – A Critical Reader”, Brian Massumi writes in his essay, that there is no cultural-theoreticalvocabulary specific to affect, and that our entire vocabularies have derived from theories of signification that arestill wedded to structure.

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AFFECT METHODOLOGIES – GILLES DELEUZE

A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Illustrations by Marc Nqui

“To reach , not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is noLonger of any importance whether one says I.” (p.3 -4)

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Illustrations by Marc Nqui

“A first type of book is the root -book. The tree is already the image of the world, or theRoot the image of the world- tree” (p.5)

“The radicle-system, or fascicular root, is the second figure of the book, to which ourModernity pays willing allegiance.”

“A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles .”

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AFFECT METHODOLOGIES – GILLES DELEUZE

A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Illustrations by Marc Nqui

3. Multiplicity – rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Orchid and the wasp

The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp (a becoming-waspOf the orchid); but the wasp Reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is neverthelessdeterritorialized , becoming A piece in the orchid’s reproductive apparatus (a becoming orchid of the wasp). But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen.

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Illustrations by Marc Nqui

4. Asignifying rupture: against the oversignifying breaks separating structures orCutting across a single structure.

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Illustrations by Marc Nqui

5. Decalcomania – a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model. All of tree logic is a logic of tracing and reproduction.6. Cartography - A rhizome is a map (and not a tracing).

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

Illustrations by Marc Nqui

7. Rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General And without an organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by acirculation of states.

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A Thousand Plateaus – Introduction: Rhizome

An another principle and maybe a summarising one – a rhizome has no beginning orend; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.

Proceeding from the middle, through the middle, coming and going rather thanStarting and finishing.

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Deleuze and Guattari talk about affects and affections in many different contexts.

For example:- as the change, or variation, that occurs when Bodies collide, or come into contact.

- part of the Deleuzian project of trying-to-understand, and Comprehend, andexpress all of the incredible, wondrous, tragic, painfulAnd destructive

configurations of things and bodies as temporally mediated, Continuous events.- the additive processes, forces, powers and expressions of change. ETC.

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Affect

This something can be specified only as sensation. It is a zone of indetermination,Of indiscernibility, as if things, beasts and persons endlessly reach that point thatImmediately preceds their natural differentiation. This is what is called an affect.

Deleuze and Guattari “What is Philosophy”