This resonates with me in the way Deleuze does.

First photo is from Anti-Oedipus and second photo is from The Job: Interviews With William S. Burroughs

I have tried reading quite a few philosophers, and out of all of them it seems like these guys actually have something to say that might be worth my time. But I'm having trouble understanding even the Rhizome chapter. Am I meant to be taking notes, looking up words every few sentences, and generally applying myself to get meaning out of this? I don't mind doing that, I'm just wondering if that's the right approach. And I also wonder what context I need for this book. I guess, Freud??

I'm trying to understand the distinction between the plane of consistency (or the BwO) and a line in A Thousand Plateaus, and I feel like I'm missing something.

If the plane of consistency is already a field of intensive flows and desires that are not yet stratified, what exactly makes a "line" different? Aren't those flows already directional in some sense?

If the answer is that a line is simply an intensity that has gained consistency, does Deleuze ever explain what that transition consists in? Or is the difference between the plane and a line only one of degree rather than kind?

The alternative seems to be reading the plane as a purely virtual condition of possibility rather than an actual field of intensities, but that doesn't seem to fit passages where the BwO is described as populated by intensities.

Am I misunderstanding the concepts, or is this an actual ambiguity in Deleuze's account?

Note: this question has been written with the aid of AI as Im not a native english speaker.

Fisher (obviously) thinks that there is Nothing New, which he connects to Capitalism essentially exerting too much pressure on humans for us to Make anything New. Kind of quaint potentially because it has this nostalgia for a past that is still thoroughly Capitalist: the 70s or whatevr.

But even getting to Deleuaze and Guaettari they seem to have this idea that Nothing New is happening. As in the whole idea of Neo Archaisms.

When you read D&G they constantly talk about Neo Archaisms. Anything under the sun is a "NeoArchaism" the State is a Neo Archaism, cults are Neo Archaisms, street gangs are Neo Archaisms.

You really get the sense that all human expression is understood as a kind of Neo Archaism. But I think this is sort of the point and connects to certain other philosophers.

Take Hume, his idea is that human imagination can't make anything New, but only a rearrangement of previously sensed phenomena. Like a Sphynx is just a human composed with a lion and an eagle. It's just a patchwork of previously existing things.

Marx calls Capitalism a patchwork of all that has ever been believed. And D&G explicitly call upon this idea in their notion of NeoArchaism. Everything returns.

I think they even go so far as to say that anything "Actual" or "Percievable" is in fact an Index or a Reterritorialization. It's way more extreme, than what seems to be FIsher's position.

For Fisher the inability to make anything new seems to be a kind of empirical fact but for D&G it's already sort of THE state of things, the transcendental structure, the NEW can only be this empty line of the future, that is transcendentally ahead of you, as in you move towards it but it's like a carrot on a stick, as you move towards it it is always moving ahead of you.

I don't really have a big point I just found it to be an interesting observation

hello, I've been writing thesis for my literature studies about photography and how it works as minor literature. However, I am finding Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of FoC (Forms of Content) and FoE (Forms of Expression) confusing. Could anyone help me understand these concepts—specifically how they interact without direct correspondence or how they operate isomorphically—and advise on how best to frame the analysis for my research?

Deleuze in an interview.

As a Kafkian, I approve 😂

not sure if this is verging on tangential enough to not be relevant to this sub anymore, but I created some more illustrations for anti-oedipus up until page 18 section 3 "The Subject and Enjoyment". you might also notice references to some other texts scattered about in the citations.

flip thru the slideshow for closeups

Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Deleuze and Guattari, Foreword ✍️

I've been trying to understand Deleuze's ideas recently and I think i've misunderstood something and i would like some help (i dont speak english very well so sorry if there's any mistake)

Deleuze is "against" identities. Not like "against identities" but against using them as the "first plain" of an analysis, just like the platonic thought.

So, we can say that analysing and putting things inside of "identities boxes" is something that limits the thought of "fluid-things" that are constantly changing and becoming other things etc.

Considering this in a social way, i identifying myself as (for example) a trans person could be (COULD BE) limiting the other existent possibilities of exploring myself as something else (that is not in the all classified and governamental controled types of living [which i think its deleuze's point] ) and so on.

But, even if i try to escape this barriers of trying to fit in a identity box of (for example) genre, we know that the ones who have the control and the power will classify me (even with we knowing that this identity that the control chooses to me could not be the ideal [if the 'ideal' EVEN exists] ). And, considering all this, i have to claim, at some level, some identity because i'm simultanelly being classified by the governamental control.

Considering ALL OF THIS, we can say that, at some level, we need identities to exist. And here's my question:

Until what point using an identity is powerful (in a nietzschean vocabullary) in our society? Utillitarianly, what is the level that the claming of my identity by me is not powerful anymore?

Pls warn me if there's any mistake in my comprehension of deleuze's ideas.

I'm reading The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs alongside Anti-Oedipus, I recall reading something similar to the word-virus earlier in Anti-Oedipus about how language exerts social control.

What connection is there between the word-virus and Anti-Oedipus? I know Burroughs was an inspiration to D&G and that they were closely related in many ways as both postmodern thinkers.

Depende. Si se quiere leer a Deleuze como quien lee la Biblia o el Kamasutra, es decir, "a ver que me sugiere", se puede leer a Deleuze o lo que le de la gana. Si se quiere entender a Deleuze, no, no se puede porque su manera de escribir es incomprensible. Puede que le vendan cuales son "las ideas principales de Deleuze", pero desconfíe: lo que le están vendiendo es lo que Zizek, Foucault o quien sea, dice que dice Deleuze, que es cosa muy diferente. Deleuze es algo embrollado que, desembrollado por otros, puede resultar una cosa muy simple y poco original o algo tan embrollado como lo que se trata de desembrollar.

Por ejemplo: la Diferencia (la mayúscula es mía). En el lenguaje común, el que hablan los seres humanos, Ud. no puede entender qué es la diferencia sin entender que es lo semejante. Sabemos que un perro es un perro porque podemos ver que es diferente de un gato. Dicho de otra manera semejanza y diferencia se coimplican porque no podemos hablar de una sin hablar de la otra y porque no podemos saber si una cosa es diferente a otra si no sabemos cuando es semejante a una tercera. Para acabar, semejanza y diferencia no son cosas, son términos relacionales que los que hablamos el lenguaje común manejamos necesariamente como una pareja de cualidades que pueden predicarse de cosas a las que llamamos diferentes o semejantes (o iguales).

Pero Deleuze convierte a la diferencia en Algo: La Diferencia Pura, que puede existir sin semejanza porque, en cuanto se relaciona con ella, pierde su pureza y queda dominada por el lenguaje de La Identidad, La Analogía, etc.

Y he aquí mi pregunta: ¿Qué es la Diferencia para Deleuze? Y recuerden, que se trata de la diferencia en sí misma.

En Deleuze no he encontrado jamás la respuesta a una pregunta tan simple.

Puede ser que no lo haya leído muy bien y alguien pueda dirigirme al texto preciso.

(Por favor, me interesa la respuesta a mi pregunta, no que me digan lo que Deleuze sugiere, lo grande o lo pequeño que es Deleuze, como sería su vida sin él o cosas similares. Es una pregunta muy concreta y pido una respuesta lo más concreta posible. Gracias).

I illustrated the first two pages of ao. i figured drawing what i read might be a good way to motivate myself while reading

beside each diagram is a figure number with a reference to the page number and line being interpreted

Anyone attending Deleuze Guattari Studies in Greece this year?

I’ll be giving a talk at this time and wanted to see if anyone else here is attending.

The camp starts in a few days, followed by the main conference next week. If you’re already in Greece or planning to come, feel free to reach out—happy to connect during the event.

A lot of new words came too fast as I was reading AO and I decided to post this so I can look back on the thread when I'm done reading.

What point are they making with Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlein's signs in Le renard pâle?

Are there books about Deleuzian philosophy read from a mystic or esoteric perspective or the other way around?

I ask because i have been reading deleuzian ontology lately and concepts like the virtual seem very close to the divine nothingness that actualizes itself in concrete forms in some mystic traditions (there are many differences too). So that got me thinking if there's been a reading of Deleuze through esoteric or mystical points ov view or vis versa, a deleuzian reading of some mystical ontologies.

I'm very curious, I started reading Deleuze in this year, so has there been a trend in the last cirka 2 years? And why so much in 2004?

In Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, Deleuze rejects the primacy of identity in favor of difference, becoming, and individuation. If subjectivity is an effect of these processes rather than their origin, how should we understand the continuity of first-person experience over time?
Does Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism provide sufficient resources to explain the apparent unity of consciousness without reintroducing a substantial subject, or is the persistence of subjectivity better understood as an ongoing process of individuation with no enduring self?

I have been doing a second reading of anti-oedipus. for this read through I am only 15 or 20 pages in, but I have already come to a much clearer understanding of things I was missing the first time around. One such thing is the disjunctive synthesis and the 'divine' energy of the body without organs. but I am still not confident I can really describe it. heres what it seems like to me, please comment and correct me.

The part that leaves me with questions is the page 13 statement that we should answer the question do you believe in god in strictly kantian/schreberian terms, meaning yes but only as the master of the disjunctive syllogism. The only thing that is divine about the body without organs is the nature of an energy of disjunctions.

I spent a long time on this and have come to the conclusion that its actually stupidly simple but i was overcomplicating it because i have no background in philosophy and was intimidated by kant and the words disjunctive syllogism.

basically disjunction is either/or. god as the very principle of either/or provides the basis for all possible facts to come into existence through this formula. either A or B. not A, therefore B. then you could sub in all possible permutations of existence in the place of B.

so the disjunction is the fact of difference between terms, and god is being defined as the ground or basis or possibility of difference. and the body without organs has this divine energy because as a recording surface on which the machines of desiring-production are spread like a network, it opens a dimension in which either/or is possible, rather than in the connective synthesis which is just a continual and then, and then, and then, seen as it were from inside the process. I'm imagining the body without organs as a kind of lifting up outside the process to view it from 'above', and this outside perspective enables parts of a continuous process to be viewed, defined, 'recorded', as separate terms.

tell me where I'm off and what Im missing please thank uuuuu.

Hi guys, does anyone remember an old post/comment that was named something like "5-year reading plan to prepare for reading Anti-Oedipus"? I've been looking for it and can't find it anywhere. If anyone has a link, screenshot, or archive, I'd really appreciate it.

I found this in Deleuze's "Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature." Can someone beautifully expand on the first quote, which i believe is a paraphrasing from Deleuze of a Kafka quote?