Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars, 1970-1987
Summaries and Commentary
A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing
- Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessions available in transcripts and recordings
- Summaries are based on research for the Deleuze Seminars project (co-directed by Charles J. Stivale and Daniel W. Smith), where full transcripts and translations, to which readers will have access for simultaneous or subsequent consultation, have been developed by an international team of scholar-translators
- Alongside summaries, an attached critical apparatus provides references to corresponding links within Deleuze’s writings, seminars, and other sources to facilitate additional research
The texts in this volume - summaries of the 216 seminars taught by Gilles Deleuze - provide unique insight into the latter half of Deleuze’s teaching career. Deleuze understood his seminars as a laboratory for developing his ongoing research, and this volume is a guide to the creative becomings in the development of his philosophical works through teaching.
From Anti-Oedipus (1972) to The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1987), Deleuze examined a wide range of philosophical perspectives in pursuit of successive thematic topics. These summaries and commentaries serve as incitement for further research, allowing readers familiar with Deleuze’s work to find new angles of approach and providing greater access to readers coming to his work for the first time.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Chapter 1, Preface: The Deleuze Seminars as Creative Becoming
1. The Deleuze Seminars: Recordings, Transcripts and Translations
2. The Deleuze Seminars, mode d’emploi
3. Summaries and Commentary Organization
Part I, The Seminars, pre-recordings
Chapter 2, Anti-Oedipus at Vincennes
1. Deleuze’s ‘Missing Years’, 1969-71
2. The Anti-Oedipus Seminar I, 1971-72
3. The Anti-Oedipus Seminar II, 1972-73
4. The Anti-Oedipus Seminar III, 1973-74
Chapter 3, A Thousand Plateaus on Italian TV
1. A Thousand Plateaus Seminar I, 1975-76
Chapter 4, Spinoza and Kant with A Thousand Plateaus
1. A Thousand Plateaus Seminar II, 1976-77
2. A Thousand Plateaus Seminar II, 1976-77
3. A Thousand Plateaus Seminar III, 1977-78
4. Kant Seminar, 1978
5. A Thousand Plateaus Seminar IV, 1978-79
Part II, The Seminars, recordings
Chapter 5, Back to the Future: A Thousand Plateaus, Leibniz, Anti-Oedipus
1. A Thousand Plateaus Seminar V, 1979-80
2. Leibniz: Philosophy and the Creation of Concepts Seminar, 1980
3. Anti-Oedipus and Other Reflections, 1980
Chapter 6, At St. Denis, with Spinoza and Painting
1. Spinoza, The Velocities of Thought Seminar, 1980-81
2. Painting and the Question of Concepts Seminar, 1981
Chapter 7, First Cinema Reflections: The Movement-Image, 1981-82
Chapter 8, Second Cinema Reflections: Classification of Signs and Time, 1982-83
Chapter 9, Third Cinema Reflections: Truth and Time – The Falsifier, 1983-84
Chapter 10, Fourth Cinema Reflections: Cinema and Thought, 1984-85
Chapter 11, Homage to a Friend: Foucault, 1985-86
1. Knowledge (Historical Formations), sessions 1-8
2. Power, sessions 9-19
3. Subjectification, sessions 20-26
Chapter 12, Leibniz and the Baroque, 1986-87
1. Leibniz as Baroque Philosopher, sessions 1-5
2. Principles and Freedom, sessions 6-20
Chapter 13: New Departures, Toward Other Folds
1. Control
2. A to Z
3. What is Philosophy?
Bibliography
Index
This book is pure gold for all of us who want to think alongside Deleuze. Stivale’s clear summaries and rich contexts deliver the relational mesh in which Deleuze’s writings came into being. We can almost hear the students crowding the seminar room, the sound recordists’ cassette changes, and the susurration of growing, living concepts.
From Cinema through philosophers to innovating creative becomings for living life, these seminars present over 200 gems from Deleuze which return the reader to the affirmative joy of being within a pedagogic fold with Deleuze. Stivale’s commentary provides a sensitive and nuanced revelation that is a reminder of the wonder visiting and revisiting Deleuze incites.
As a reader who has benefited immeasurably from Charles Stivale’s excellent translations and scholarship over the decades, this latest gift of the Deleuze seminars to an English-speaking audience feels unduly unreciprocated. Yet, I am confident it will inspire new research into Deleuze’s pedagogy and, perhaps, repay the author in some small way for his tireless endeavors.
