/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13012316]

Could someone explain Deleuze to me, particularly the immanence thing. I tried reading Difference and Repetition and also A Thousand Plateaus, but had no success.

[Anonymous No.13012451]

>>13012316
Try Anti-Oedipus, it seemed straightforward to me

[Anonymous No.13012461]

>>13012451
I want to understand his more philosophical stuff

[Anonymous No.13012475]

>>13012461
>Deleuze exists
>People:Yea this guy is really hard to understand you should probably read secondary literature or start from the first stuff hes wrote i.e. his critques on kant nietzche to get a basic idea
>/lit/ in literally every thread about him:This guys really fucking hard read the proper prerequisites
>your dumbass:im going to read "A thousand plateaus"-the SECOND book in the C&S series-and "Difference and Repetition"-arguably a good intro but very difficult text.
>*attempts to read a book dedicated to decades of philosophy without proper preliminaries and or secondary literature*
>your dumbass:i dont get it tf????

[Anonymous No.13012482]

>>13012475
my idea is that, if it's something useful, it can be stated in a few paragraphs. Otherwise it's too abstract or just nonsense. Why can't people just explain how Deleuze create a philosophy of immanence, what is that in practice, how does he avoids or rules out transcendence? Seems straightforward.

[Anonymous No.13012521]

>>13012482

Is that how your teachers taught you as a elementary student? Did they just say 'heres what letters are, if you can't read and write now too bad.'? No they fucking didn't most important things you know you didn't learn in a few paragraphs, complicated topics and ideas take time to unravel you fucking tardlet. Not every idea is simple.

[Anonymous No.13012528]

>>13012521
most concepts can be explained through simple analogies or examples.
I understood Derrida's concept of différance without reading anything of him, just by reading summaries and people's explanations.

[Anonymous No.13012530]

>>13012521
>>13012475
Get a load of this Deleuzer.

[Anonymous No.13012546]

>>13012482
If you don't understand the semantics of the foundation, how are you suppose to understand iterations or critiques of said foundation? Think about it like this:If you want to learn Topology you have to know calculus right? And if you want to learn calculus you should have a good understanding of algebra or the better term "pre-calculus". To understand Post-Structuralist/PoMo you first have to learn the basis;Structuralism with Saussure then from there you have to go through the ideas and (skim)the history of PoMo. Im not saying you have to read a textbook of Freud's and Lacan's work and a ton of other stuff to understand Deleuze/Foucalt/PoMo which they themselves never did,infact, I hate the idea of such things. Its just that how are you suppose to understand the language proper without attempting to assimilate yourself. Think about, how would you expect someone to know or critique a certain culture foreign to them without fully assimilating and accepting it? You can't just pick up a book, read it and think you'll be able to understand a certain culture or in this case Deleuze ideas when writing a book that dident just come out of his ass, he obviously had cultivated things to led him to think a certain way then write in that certain way of w critique you don't even have the basis of. Cmon dude your thinking like a brainlet, its like you pick up a book on Quantum mechanics/String Theory without even having undergrad physics or calculus down.

Am I saying you have to read a fuck ton of books to understand deleuze?No. Do I think you should read where the basis of his writing comes from, know(skim)the history of PoMo and maybe a secondary text? Yes.

[Anonymous No.13012589]

>>13012528
also yes concepts can be explained through analogies or examples etc etc

But noone is going to write a 800 page book to spoon-feed you shit that was already written, if Deleuze took the time to explain/cite/make foot notes we would have DFW scenario on are hands that is, 200+(prob more) pages of footnotes that is basically a ctrl+c of a textbook on Structuralism and then another 200+ pages on Post-Structuralism which is just dumb.

btw you may understand basic ideas by reading in this meathead way but in no way shape or form will you understand a philosopher this way, and maybe you did understand Derrida, but then again Derrida doesent require preliminaries as his writing isent as dense

[Anonymous No.13012627]

>>13012546
thanks for the response, anon. I recognize what you said there but still, i think i can understand Pomo ideas without needing to read the texts. As i said, i think i understand DIfférance well enough, and I can explain it:
>words are arbitrary. the concept of cat could be called dog and vice versa. the only necessary thing is that the words (signifiers) are different from each other.
>words can only be interpreted in a certain context. there are many contexts. the question of what context should be used to interpret a words is also subject to context
>there are no lone concepts, concepts need other concepts in order to exist. in order to define a word you need to use other words. words defer their meaning to other words.
>there is no intelligibility outside language. in order to talk about anything outside language you still need to use language. (hence the famous quote that there is nothing outside the text)

Why can't anyone even come close to do what I just did to Derrida but using any Deleuzian concept?

[Anonymous No.13012714]

>>13012316
Go watch Deleuze For The Desperate on Youtube. Each episode is covers terms from A Thousand Plateaus and is well-sourced.
The wiki for Immanence is pretty easy to understand, all things considered.

[Anonymous No.13012747]

>>13012714
I understand the concept but I don't know what to make of it. The Immanent plane is a kind of substance that is self contained, immanent to itself and contains everything (so nothing transcends it). The concept is inspired by Spinoza. Ok - But, how is this in any way intelligible or falsifiable? Yeah of course i can entertain such abstract concepts and definitions but this isn't really grounded in anything. How am I supposed to make sense of this? I could equally conceive of a god and other arbitrary ontological stuff and derive all kinds of philosophies from it but it would be pointless.

[Anonymous No.13012770]

>everything in existence is different
>metaphysics privileges sameness over difference, but sameness is an illusion
>we shouldn't aim to transcend the world because live within it
>also language codifies flows of desire to generate consciousness
thats basically it. it's retarded.

[Anonymous No.13012785]

Just read secondary literature on him

[Anonymous No.13013390]

>>13012627
god you fucking retard, it's like you have no concept of what contemplating a subject for a long time can have on your understanding of it, your "summary" of difference is simplistic and watered down, maybe because you actually haven't read the texts

[Anonymous No.13013405]

>>13012627
For one thing, your 'famous' quote is actually a misquotation. So not only are you attempting to grapple with very difficult concepts without tackling the primary texts which explore them, you're also putting forward claims that these authors never even made.

Also, the way you've described differance hasn't really made the step away from a static/structuralist conception of language (words defined by what they are not), when what differance shows is that meaning differs along an axis of signification, IE. a cumulative model for language that takes temporality into account. You have this slippage between signifier and signified, such that over time the one eventually fails to match the other, and meaning is deferred away from its original object