Deleuze and the Meaning of Life

by Claire Colebrook

The intensification of interest in Deleuze over the last decade has coincided with the end of the linguistic paradigm in both continental and analytic philosophy. Indeed, the division between the two traditions appears to be closing and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze seems to be crucial to this convergence, as he is both indebted to the phenomenological tradition at the same time as he operates with concepts drawn from the sciences. Claire Colebrook explores these ideas and offers a new and alternative assessment of Deleuze's contribution to philosophy. She argues that while Deleuze does draw upon sciences that explain the emergence of language, art and philosophy, his own thought is distinguished by a discontinuist thesis: systems may emerge from tendencies of life but always have the capacity to operate without reference to their original aim. Colebrook makes new claims regarding how Deleuze's philosophy might be used to read contemporary art and thus offers an original and crucial contribution to the Deleuzian debate.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 21, 2010

About the author

Claire Colebrook is an Australian cultural theorist, currently appointed Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. She has published numerous works on Gilles Deleuze, visual art, poetry, queer theory, film studies, contemporary literature, theory, cultural studies and visual culture.

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colebrook offers a stimulating exploration of, well, life - vitalism, the subject, language, art via Bergson, James, Ruyer, Heidegger, Derrida, Badiou, Rorty to Deleuze & Guattari ... all wrapped up in just over 200 pages.

"There may be an elevation of philosophy, the theoretical life, and the good, over the chaos of everyday material existence; but for every sense in which such a move serves to centre knowledge (on the Ideas) it is equally decentring, away from the human knower, away from any single or graspable origin towards an emanation or a flowing forth of life from a ground that has no being other than an ongoing creativity, production and multiplication" (p.45).

[Derek]

wow I barely understood any of this but cool vibes :)

[S. Kallahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read. Definitely a better reading of Deleuze than Colebrook's introduction. There is a strange ambivalence in her characterization of capitalism, though. It feels a bit like a re-reading of capitalism after Zizek's whole "now is the time of Deleuzean capitalism" statements. My readings of Anti-O put D&G far more on the critical side - they did in the end declare themselves still and always Marxist. At the same time, my reading may not have been as careful as it needs to be to get the nuances of what she was saying about capital and life. Will definitely need to return to this, though.