Deleuze and the Problem of Affect
- Re-examines Deleuze’s status as a pillar of affect theory and, a fortiori, affect theory itself
- Demonstrates simultaneously ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’ tendencies of Deleuze’s philosophy
- Develops affect as the operator of interdisciplinarity according to Deleuze
- Challenges the portrayal of Deleuze as an unambiguous champion of affect
Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Deleuze has been pivotal for the recent ‘affective turn’ in philosophy and the humanities at large. Critics and proponents alike, however, have yet to appreciate the extent to which Deleuze himself remains profoundly ambivalent toward affect and embodiment in general. In this book, D. J. S. Cross argues that this ambivalence and its longevity have been overlooked because they only become apparent through a systematic analysis of affect throughout Deleuze’s work.
By outlining how, from beginning to end, Deleuze’s system of thought both ruptures and complies with the tradition, Cross recalibrates Deleuze’s philosophy and the recent ‘affective turn’ that hinges upon it.
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
- Adermatoglyphia
- The ‘Problem’ of ‘Affect’
- Ambivalence
- Itinerary
- Notes
Part I. Ambivalence
1. The Royal Faculty
- A Doctrine of Faculties
- Transcendence
- The Royal Faculty
- The Original Origin
- The Sensible Hitch
- Implications
- Notes
2. Furtive Contemplations
- Extra Interiority
- Dénouement
- Organic Extension
- Contemplating Chaos
- Notes
3. Between Art and Opinion
- Avant-Garde
- Euthanasia
- Major Minor Warp
- Style Each Time
- Notes
Part II. The Paradox of Spinoza
4. Spinoza, Socrates of Deleuze
- The Paradox
- A Character Study
- Cause and Attribution
- Indifference
- Coronation, Transfiguration
- Spinoza and Spinoza
- Notes
5. Affectus Becoming l’Affect
- Existential Choreographies
- The Antinomy of Affect
- Betrayal
- Immaterial Material
- Notes
6. Deleuze and the First ‘Ethics’
- One More Hitch
- A Bizarre Sign
- The Phenomenologist and the Pantheist
- Select and Organise
- Notes
Conclusion: The Body without Affects
- Closing Negotiations
- Conjurer l’affect
- Pre-Primary Emotion
- Gilles Blanched
- Notes
Bibliography
This excellent book is a welcome counterpoint to the ubiquity that affect has acquired in much recent theorising. Cross not only illuminates key sources of the concept but, more importantly, problematises them in ways that give back to Deleuze some of the joy and inventiveness of his own philosophical method.
