Deleuze K

Kant – nah fam – reason is where its at – ontology is the same

across humans - static
Deleuze – ontology is grounded is difference – the unchanging
essence in humanity is the fact that humans change
- Becoming – we care changing in the world
- Affect- something we experience and being experienced –
nothing can escape affect – kant hijack – reason is bound by
hijack – if I step on a nail, I will first feel pain, then ill look for the
cause for the pain (the reason)
o When kant goes to the beach he just watches the waves
– is boring as hell LMAO
o When deleuze goes to the beach he experiences things –
plays in water and has a good time –
- Assemblage – something that is interconnected – a grouping –
an affecting community – my tdc buddies are an assemblage –
u work w each other, had fun, etc. – u act differently in different
places
- Rhizome – a root pm – its where subject differentiate – how
they evolve and grow – its committed to having new ways of
“being”
- Majoritarian Subject – the ideal subject
- Minoritarian Subject – the “other” -
- Machine – used to designate a nexus of cultural production –
creates images and ways to view a subject – with affects – a
site of knowledge production – the university is a machine bc
the way professors teach a subject influences how their
students see the world
- Faciality Machine – a bad machine – when producing
knowledge, it reads identities – then compares it to an
majoritarian subject. – for example: it tries to code blackness by
comparing to whiteness (the subject)
- The War Machine – a good machine – constantly producing
and it’s a war on authoritarian ideas, or what we ought to be bc
of cultural standards, ideas, society, etc. – its v disruptive
- Usually the link is – the aff makes someone static – impact is
oppression against non-conforming bodies
- Alt – embrace ur otherness and your constant changing self (p
common)
 Deleuzian Metaphysics
o Deleuze forwards the idea that Kant is not material
enough
 He thinks that Kant is missing the point
 He thought Kant was on the crux of
introducing Deleuzianism… he thought that
Kant was a genius
 Kant said that because we have practical reason 
all human beings should make the same exact
choice in order to be consistent
 If we are all practical reasoners, then we
should all “think the same”
o Almost a human robot that always
spits out the right answers
 Deleuze defines differences as the different
intersections of our identity that contributes to
our experience
 Deleuze thinks that there are certain events that
evade our rationality…
 He calls them singularities
 I.e: how do you react to a car accident 
your response isn’t to use practical reason…
its more so “I need to gtf out of this place… I
do not want to die”
 We cannot rationally cope with these events
 One of Deleuze’s main arguments/central claims
to Kant:
 Deleuze 68  kant is missing the idea of
time
  Arg: subjects are not necessarily stable or
whole or practical reasoners  they are
constantly in a process of becoming and
changing
o They change with their experiences
throughout time
o Growing up, you pick up different
components throughout the world…
 Proven fact: when people become
teenagers, they start questioning
their sexual identity
o These changes can send you in a
variety of different directions  this is
a very unstable process
 What kant is really saying when people have
practical reason:
 Kant = notices that consistently in certain
moments in time people want to acts for
reason
o But this is just a particular “hat” that
people can put on in particular
instances in time
o The conclusion from “human beings
are rational” can only be made in
specific moments in time
 This proves that time and our progression
through time makes subjects fractured and
unstable
 Your vision of what objects look like in a
moment in time change over time
o Analogy: as you move down the road of time,
singularities are road signs
 From baby to 8: When I was born, my parents
named me Todd… but the day before my 8th bday,
my goldfish died  I didn’t really understand the
concept of death, and now I become super emo
and worried about death
 Let’s say the death of my goldfish = a
singularity that changes my perspective in
life  sets me on a path that is slightly
different from the “straight path”
 When I was 14, my girlfriend Stacy broke up
with me b/c my ears are too big… later on in
life, I turned it into something productive by
spray-painting political figures with large
ears to critique the state
 These singularties makes me different… the only
thing that is constant is time
 This means identity is necessarily contingent
 Deleuzian Ethics
o 2 Ideas:
o The rhizome
 A biology term  super messy, weedy roots. They constantly split
in all directions
 In ethics, people tend to ignore this
 Looking at the tree doesn’t capture the whole picture… the truth is
really very chaotic  the tree is supported by a mess of roots
underneath it
o the image of thought
 Things such as Kant… objectivity
 We place an objective standard on the world (Deleuze doesn’t try
to deny objective truth)
 Who’s really saying why something is objectively good?
 Pomo philosophers try to ask why these objective truths are
instituted
o Analogy: When we see a tree… it seems very stable, very clean cut, very
compact
o This is what we think about when we think about objective truth
o Underlying this image of thought, there are rhizomes
 The roots of the tree
o We can constantly diffuse…
o Deleuze says that the things we treat as objective rules aren’t really objective
o There is a long history of moral disagreement… the history of philosophy
have been all over the place  the history of phil shows that we aren’t
trying to discover objective truth since we have been trying to experiment
with different modes of ethics
 The process of ethical formation is rhizomatic
o Progress is possible under Deleuzian FWs
 People used to think that only white people are practical
reasoners…
 But now this is not the case