High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
4
Computer Deleuze
COLLAPSE III5
Editorial Introduction
Robin Mackay
Welcome to our third volume, the greater part o which isdevoted to the work o Gilles Deleuze.
1
Alongside a numbero searching examinations o his work, it also eatures twopreviously untranslated texts by Deleuze himsel. Althoughassembled under the working title ‘Unknown Deleuze’, thevolume announces no scandalous revelation, no radicalreinterpretation; rather, this title simply indicates a humbleacknowledgement o the act that,
philosophically speaking
,Deleuze remains something o an enigma.It is not without trepidation that we devote almost anentire volume to one particular philosopher; even more sogiven the ever-accelerating trend o secondary commentaryand the rash o titles claiming to apply Deleuze’s thought to
1. In the second part o the volume we present a record o the conerence ‘SpeculativeRealism’, which elaborates certain themes taken up in
C
ollapse
Volume II. Sincethese themes were already introduced in that volume, we will remark here onlythat one should not anticipate a discursive statement o ully-ormed philosophi-cal positions, but rather a continuation – in the absence o the extended interviewseatured in previous volumes – o
C
ollapse
’s commitment to the publication o ‘live philosophy’. ‘Speculative Realism’ is a conversation between our philosopherswho think outside partisan aliations to particular thinkers or schools, and thusis genuinely exploratory. Its ‘unnished’ aspect refects its status as a document o contemporary philosophy in the making, in which new conceptual approaches areproposed, the borders between science and philosophy probed, and the history o thought mined or resh insights.
COLLAPSE III, ed. R. Mackay (Falmouth: Urbanomic, November 2007)ISBN 978-0-9553087-2-0http://www.urbanomic.com
COLLAPSE III6areas as diverse as dance, eminism and geography. Theselatter might be taken as proo enough o the continuing ecundity o Deleuze’s philosophy, but they belie the actthat it is still dicult to situate his work philosophically.Interdisciplinary appropriations too oten compound this,turning ‘Deleuzianism’ into a game o recognition and thusmerely succumbing to a new image o thought (
everyone knows
what a rhizome is …) Although doubtless suchworks can and do succeed in producing worthwhile andproductive syntheses, it is dicult to assess their claim torepresent Deleuze’s thought without a renewed, properlyphilosophical eort to examine the latter. But should thiseven matter, given that Deleuze himsel told us simply touse concepts ‘like a toolbox’? Such a riposte typies themost deleterious aspect o the ‘success’ currently enjoyed by Deleuze; or any precision tool must be mastered beoreit is ‘put to work’, and or this one must understand, in turn,its own workings and its interaction with the rest o theconceptual ‘equipment’ in hand.The rst o our texts by
G
illes
D
eleuze
himsel, ashort interview rom 1981, oers a review o the enduring concerns o his ambitious philosophical project. Despiteits brevity, the exchange merits translation because it seesDeleuze, despite his antipathy to being asked ‘generalquestions’,
2
speaking on a general level about his philo-sophical work, even going so ar as to make a distinction– heretical by the lights o
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
– between his own concerns and those o Félix Guattariin that work. In this exchange Deleuze recapitulates andrearms the major themes o his thought – a renewed
2.
Dialogues II,
1.
Add a Comment