Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives

by Francois Dosse, Deborah Glassman (Translator)

Overview

In May 1968, Gilles Deleuze was an established philosopher teaching at the innovative Vincennes University, just outside of Paris. Félix Guattari was a political militant and the director of an unusual psychiatric clinic at La Borde. Their meeting was quite unlikely, yet the two were introduced in an arranged encounter of epic consequence. From that moment on, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in a surprising, productive partnership, collaborating on several groundbreaking works, including Anti-Oedipus, What Is Philosophy? and A Thousand Plateaus.

François Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history—particularly the turbulent time of May 1968—play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231518673
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/20/2010
Series:	European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	672
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

François Dosse is a professor at the IUFM Creteil, the Paris Institute for Political Studies, and the Center for Cultural History, University of Versailles/Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. He has published several important books on intellectual history, including History of Structuralism: The Rising Sign, 1945–1966 and History of Structuralism: The Sign Sets, 1967–Present.

Deborah Glassman is the author of several works on literature, education, and international development and the translator of Dosse's two books on structuralism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Betwixt or Between
Part I. Folds: Parallel Biographies
1. Félix Guattari: The Psychopolitical Itinerary, 1930–1964
2. La Borde: Between Myth and Reality
3. Daily Life at La Borde
4. Testing Critical Research Empirically
5. Gilles Deleuze: The Hero's Brother
6. The Art of the Portrait
7. Nietzsche, Bergson, Spinoza: A Trio for a Vitalist Philosophy
8. An Ontology of Difference
9. The Founding Rupture: May 1968
Part II. Unfolding: Intersecting Lives
10. "Psychoanalysm" Under Attack
11. Anti-Oedipus
12. Machine Against Structure
13. "Minor" Literature as Seen by Deleuze and Guattari
14. A Thousand Plateaus : A Geophilosophy of Politics
15. The CERFI at Work
16. The "Molecular Revolution": Italy, Germany, France
17. Deleuze and Foucault: A Philosophical Friendship
18. An Alternative to Psychiatry?
19. Deleuze at Vincennes
20. The Year of Combat: 1977
Part III. Surplices: 1980–2007
21. Guattari Between Culture and Ecology
22. Deleuze Goes to the Movies
23. Guattari and Aesthetics: Consolation During the Winter Years
24. Deleuze Dialogues with Creation
25. An Artist Philosophy
26. Winning Over the West
27. Around the World
28. Two Deaths
29. Their Work at Work
30. Conclusion
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Michael Hardt

What is most striking in François Dosse's dual biography is how utterly different are these two men—not only in their academic training but also in their styles of thought, temperament, social habits, and modes of political engagement. One gets the sense that their collaboration is rich precisely because they are able to work with these differences and continually set them into play, all the while maintaining the utmost respect for and fascination with each other.

Ronald Bogue

The 'intertwined' biography of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari bears all the traits of Francois Dosse's previous work. It is scrupulously researched, written with verve, adroit and responsible in its handling of complex philosophical issues, and filled with hitherto unpublished details about the lives of its subjects and the often tempestuous events that surrounded them throughout their careers. An impressive and important study.

Editorial Reviews

A comprehensive and polyvocal biography on the lives and work of Deleuze and Guattari.

Foucault Studies - Thomas Nail

An impressively comprehensive examination of the lives and times of Deleuze and Guattari... Richly filled with biographical and historical detail (and with amusing and often poignant anecdote), Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives represents an inmmense scholarly achievement... Essential reading.

European Legacy

Dosse makes Deleuze and Guattari mysterious again.

Bookforum - Scott McLemee

Dosse has produced a magnificently well-researched double biography.

Artforum - Terry Eagleton

This is a massively researched and rewarding book that will attract the attention of all students of Deleuze and Guattari.

Choice

An exhaustive and fascinating account of a remarkable collaboration between Guattari, a radical, militant psychiatrist, and Deleuze, one of the towering figures of contemporary French philosophy, whose work together produced Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, startlingly original blends of social psychology, philosophy, and capitalist critique that positioned itself in opposition to both socialism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Dosse, a French professor of history, traces these lines of influence, placing the pair's work firmly in the context of the May 1968 student uprising, and both authors' strained relationships with a megalomaniacal Lacan. The intellectual background of each writer is examined: Deleuze's texts on Bergson, Nietzsche, and Spinoza, and Guattari's work as director of a psychiatric unit outside of Paris where distinctions between patient and doctor were obliterated. The author strives to re-establish Guattari as an integral collaborator, one whose contribution was overshadowed in later years by Deleuze's celebrity. However, despite the wealth of research, the author too often resorts to paraphrases of their writings, and the book would have been well served by judicious editing. Nonetheless, as a glimpse into a remarkable period in French intellectual history where politics, philosophy, and literary brilliance coalesced, it is captivating. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Dosse has produced a magnificently well-researched double biography.

Artforum - Terry Eagleton Terry Eagleton