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by: John Rajchman
Amazon.com's Price: $22.00 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 194
EAN: 9780262681209
ISBN: 026268120X
Label: The MIT Press
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 175
Publication Date: October 30, 2000
Publisher: The MIT Press
Sales Rank: 418191
Studio: The MIT Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
This book is a map of the work of Gilles Deleuze—the man Michel Foucault would call the 'only real philosophical intelligence in France.' It is not only for professional philosophers, but for those engaged in what Deleuze called the 'nonphilosophical understanding of philosophy' in other domains, such as the arts, architecture, design, urbanism, new technologies, and politics. For Deleuze's philosophy is meant to go off in many directions at once, opening up zones of unforeseen connections between disciplines.
Rajchman isolates the logic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy and the 'image of thought' that it supposes. He then works out its implications for social and cultural thought, as well as for art and design—for how to do critical theory today. In this way he clarifies the aims and assumptions of a philosophy that looks constantly to invent new ways to affirm the 'free differences' and the 'complex repetitions' in the histories and spaces in which we find ourselves. He looks at the particular realism and empiricism that this affirmation implies and how they might be used to diagnose new forces confronting us today. In the process, he explores the many connections that Deleuze himself constructs in working out his philosophy, with the arts, political movements, even the neurosciences and artificial intelligence.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Hishyhash and hellfire stew
I found this "introduction" to be incredibly unhelpful, for many of the reasons stated previously, but particularly the fact that as one scans just about any page in the book, you find each literally packed with references to other difficult works, literary, cinematic, mathematical, philisophical. One nearly needs an encylopedic understanding of every trend in western thought for the last 500 years to grasp what the author is putting across. For example, I've just randomly opened the book to page ... Read More
Rating:  - another piece of the puzzle
It's true that this book is missing the kind of rich examples that make Deleuze such a pleasure to read, but Rajchman is doing something else here. Unlike those who carefully police "what deleuze means," and pounce on "mis-interpretations" of his work, Rajchman opens up Deleuze rather than closing him off. This is a little book--to be read over a week on the subway--that expands our idea of what Deleuze can mean, rather than attempting to nail down what he DOES mean. I would respectfully disagree ... Read More
Rating:  - A Superficial [mis]Reading
Screw this chump, read Brian Massumi's book instead (Capitalism & Scizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari). Massumi translated 1000plateaus and is so much more than a preeminent French translator: He is a righteous theorist himself and seems to be just about the only person who understands Deleuze's thought well enough to treat it in this capacity.
I cannot overemphasize what a despicable, disappointing, and reductive book this is. It was a waste of my money and time.
Rating: - The Superficial Deleuze
There will always be a need for good readings of Deleuze, but not for one that glosses his philosophy with as many commonplaces, cliches, and indifferent remarks as this text. The key to explaining Deleuze, like the key to Deleuze's philosophy itself, remains in the examples, which are utterly lacking here. Readers can, and should, do better than this.
Rating:  - Awkward Introduction
When writing a critical introduction to a philosopher's work--especially work that advances a system of thought that avoids systemization and courts confusion--one is faced with a choice: either one attempts to court the admiration of one's colleagues by being anti- or non-reductive in her account, pitching the introduction to the initiated and actively avoiding what is looked upon as unfaithful simplification, or one shuffs-off the "reductionist" charge and writes an introduction that is meant for the ... Read More
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