Body without Organs: the Philosophic Gesture of Gilles Deleuze
Open PEI Summer Course
In spite of its complexity, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze has shown its ability to penetrate all kinds of discourses – including the discourse of art, of course – and a potential for metaphoric contagion that sets him apart as a singular case in contemporary philosophy. But what does this singularity actually consist of? How can we steer through the many, expressive, but far from obvious Deleuzian concepts that all readers of theory are bound to come across – and not necessarily used in a relevant way? The objective of this course imparted by José Luis Pardo is precisely to allow participants to familiarize themselves with the type of movement or mechanism of thought that operates in the work of Deleuze –that is, not with its stages or evolution, but with its gesture –, be it in his monographs or his more methodological works and the long period of his collaboration with Félix Guattari.
Imparted by José Luis Pardo
Programme
Monday 5, Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7; and Monday 12 and Tues 13 of July at 7 pm
Monday July 5
Drama in Three Acts, or on Being in so far as Not-Being
As well as presenting an overview of the works of Deleuze, the first session will highlight the internal tensions between different instances of the philosophy of Deleuze, and his original way of «resolving» them, which became the source of the particular gesture that characterized his work right up to the end.
Tuesday July 6
Reversing Platoism
According to the maxim that Deleuze borrows from Nietzsche, the task of modern philosophy is to reverse Platonism. Deleuze claims that philosophy has been prevented from becoming modern because its official «modernizers» maintain close links with the old regime. The culmination of the Nietzschean program of reversing Platonism would be, writes Deleuze, the only way of achieving a genuinely modern philosophy.
Wednesday July 7
L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze
Screening of a selection of fragments from the film L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze (1988-1989), directed by Pierre-André Boutang and Michel Pamart, in which Deleuze sets out some of his ideas in conversations with Claire Parnet.
Monday July 12
Deleuzian Times
Deleuze believes that external parameters cannot give a measure of modernity in philosophy, and as such the conception of a genuinely new time (in which the «modern» is not simply the continuation of antiquity) can only come from a genuinely new conception of time, which Deleuze develops in Différence et répétition and Logique du sens.
Tuesday July 13
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
The collaboration between Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which commenced in the context of May 68 and only came to an end with Guattari's death in 1992, began with a very unusual work of political philosophy, L'Anti-Oedipe. In its pages, projects of personal personal and aesthetic liberation converge with revolution, in a conception of desire that attempts to release it from its confinement in the private sphere. Mille plateaux, «part two», is an attempt to construct a «philosophical system» capable of engaging with the times.
José Luis Pardo (Madrid, 1954), philosopher and essayist, is Professor of Philosophy at Universidad Complutense in Madrid. He is the author of numerous books, including La banalidad (1989), Deleuze. Violentar el pensamiento (1990), Sobre los espacios: pintar, escribir, pensar (1991), Las formas de la exterioridad (1992, finalist, National Essay Prize), La intimidad (1996), La regla del juego. Sobre la dificultad de aprender filosofía (2004, National Essay Prize) and Esto no es música. Introducción al malestar de la cultura de masas (2007). He is currently working on a work on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.
Tel. 93 481 79 00
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