Deleuze's Nietzsche Author(s): Petra Perry Reviewed work(s): Source: boundary 2, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp.

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Deleuze's Nietzsche

Petra Perry
Intheir 1976 manifesto,1Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattarielaborate a the qualities of the rhizome, theirhomely figurefor thinking: subterranean and, althoughinvisiblefrom clump of bulbs or tubers, constantlyproliferating aboveground, always changing direction and form as a pell-mell assemblage of parts. Next to this image, Deleuze and Guattaripose, as the figure that has dominated the procedures for thinkingof Western rationalism,the tree and its mirror image, the radicle root system. The dominance of these arborescent structures, with their interlockingarrangementof symmetrical and polarized branches-either-or, thesis and antithesis, and division and analogy all serving equally this formalization-have dictated the limitsand reductions built into an inherited mode of thinking.In this pairing, the rhizome stands apart fromthe arborescent: Itis not an opposition, since it has
Rhizome:Introduction 1. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 1976), sub(Paris:Minuit, to sequently includedas the introduction A ThousandPlateaus, trans. BrianMassumi of University MinnesotaPress, 1987). The latterworkis hereaftercited in (Minneapolis: my text as Plateaus. Press.CCC 2 0190-3659/93/$1.50. University boundary 20:1,1993.Copyright 1993byDuke ?

Perry/ Deleuze'sNietzsche 175 existed all along as an undergroundactivity,unappreciatedbut serviceable, an unofficialmode of production. One surprise in this exposition of the rhizome is that Deleuze and Guattari attack Nietzsche. Deleuze's earlier elaborations of alternative styles of thinking-ludic, delirious, ecstatic, and nomadic-were explicitly linked to and fortifiedby reference to Nietzsche. The rhizome, however, is (Plateaus, 11, 16): "antigenealogy"and opposed to "returns" Nietzsche's aphorisms shatter the linear unityof knowledge only to invoke the cyclic unityof the eternal return,present as the nonknown in thought. This is as much to say that the fascicular system does not really break with dualism, with the complementaritybetween a subject and an object, a naturalrealityand a spiritualreality:unity is consistently thwartedand obstructed in the object, while a new type of unitytriumphsin the subject. (Plateaus, 6) Ratherthan wrestlingwiththe terms of Deleuze and Guattari'sargument, let it suffice at this pointto registerthat the poststructuralist reception of Nietzsche, very largely an affairof Deleuze's reading and advocacy, has taken a twist. Equally important,Deleuze's earlier formulationof his relation to Nietzsche no longer fits the revised criteria:"Ifind among Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza, and Nietzsche a secret linkwhich resides in the critique of negation, the cultivationof joy, the hatred of interiority, exteriority the of forces and relations, the denunciation of power, etc." The lineage into which Deleuze reads himself, "byloving authors who were opposed to the rationalisttradition," turns out to be just another branch on a tree, and his "secret link"simply a validationof the arborescent model.2 Both admirers and detractors have been unanimous in crediting Deleuze with a privileged role as a primaryinstigatorof a new reading of Nietzsche, one that has pervaded and strongly influenced the climate of French poststructuralism.3 Therefore, the suggestion of a revised version
2. The precedingquotationsare fromGilles Deleuze, "IHave Nothingto Admit," trans. Janis Forman,Semiotext(e)2, no. 3 (1977):112;hereafter cited in mytext as Nothing. 3. Several essays trace specifics of Deleuze's use of Nietzsche: Vincent Pecora, "Deleuze's Nietzsche and Post-structuralist SubStance 48 (1986): 34-50; Thought," in Hugh Tomlinson,"Nietzscheon the Edge of Town:Deleuze and Reflexivity," Exceedingly Nietzsche, ed. D. F. Krelland D. Wood (London: Routledge,1988), 150-63; and RonaldBogue, Deleuze and Guattari (London: Routledge,1989). A sharp contrast needs to be stressed between the receptionDeleuze has been afforded fromwithinthe Frenchintellectual and whereresidual versionsof Nietzsche community thatfromwithout,

2 176 boundary / Spring1993 of Nietzsche in Deleuze and Guattari's Rhizome rebounds on a larger French reception. To measure its impact,a sketch of Deleuze's earliercontributionsis useful. Deleuze's career spans more than fourdecades. The firstdecade fits neatly within the routine prescribed for obtaining a professorship: lyceum teaching and a substantial productionof modest anthologies and monographs. From David Hume, sa vie, son oeuvre (1952) through Le Bergsonisme (1966), and includingboth of the books on Nietzsche, Deleuze's publications fall easily into various series of Presses Universitairesde France; they are introductions directed largely to undergraduates preparing for exams. Deleuze's books on Nietzsche, Proust,and Bergson, and the slightly aberrantessays of the period-on Sacher-Masoch or Klossowski-appear remarkableonly withinthe context of laterwork.Whatever"secret links"or personal accounts Deleuze may have felt himselfsettling duringthis period,
exert more influence.Foucaultexemplifiesthe formerperspectiveas he argues against "Deleuzehas writtena superb book about Nietzsche, and "a single Nietzscheanism": the presence of Nietzsche in his other worksis clearlyapparent,there is no although or deafening reference . .. nor any attemptto wave the Nietzscheanflag for rhetorical An with and politicalends" (see "Structuralism Post-structuralism: Interview MichelFouTelos55 (1983):203. EarlyFrenchresponses demonstrate trans.JeremyHarding, cault," see consonantreception: Andr6 Nietzsch6ennes," Glucksmann, Critique "Premeditations Revue de M6taphyet 213 (1965): 125-44; Angele Kremer-Marietti, "Diff6rence qualit6," "Capitalisme Lyotard, sique et de Morale3 (1970):339-49; Jean-Frangois 6nergumene," Critique306 (1972): Critique306 (1972): 923-56; Rene Girard, "Systemedu d6lire," s'est pendue,"Le Nouvel Observateur 957-96; and MichelFoucault'snotices: "Ariane 282 (1970): 885-909; and his 229 (1969): 36-37; "Theatrum Critique philosophicum," Viking,1977), xi-xiv.This receptionsolidifieswith preface to Anti-Oedipus(New York: contributions the special issue on Deleuze of L'Arc49 (1972; revised, 1980). Further are in the same tradition VincentDescombes's chapterson Deleuze in ModernFrench CambridgeUniversity Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Foxand J. M. Harding(Cambridge: Press, 1980), 152-67 and 173-90, andJean Jacques Lecercle'sPhilosophythroughthe LookingGlass (La Salle: Open Court,1985). The consistentand substantialopposition, in is by althoughfocused on Foucault, best formulated JurgenHabermas ThePhilosophiMIT Lawrence(Cambridge: Press, 1987). trans. Frederick cal Discourse of Modernity, that Nietzsche "is [or should be] no longer His argumentis based on the proposition und 1968,"in Kultur Kritik [ein contagious"("ZuNietzsches Erkenntnistheorie Nachwort] is furthered Manfred Habermas's Frank, by position Suhrkamp,1973], 239). [Frankfurt: of Deleuze's and Guattari's "TheWorldas Willand Representation: Critique Capitalism trans.DavidBerger,Telos57 (1983):166-77; as Schizo-analysisand Schizo-discourse," of Noteson the Rhizome-thinking Deleuze and of "TheReality 'Machines': ChristaBOrger, Telos64 (1985):33-44. A neopragmatist trans. SimonSrebrny, perspectiveis Guattari," in "Unsoundness Perspective," rather Rorty, poorlyserved by a cursoryreviewby Richard TimesLiterary Supplement,17 June 1983, 619-20.

Perry/ Deleuze'sNietzsche 177 his actual productionfits easily withingenerous boundaries of the history of philosophy; that is, precisely within the terrainof his own institutional training(Nothing, 111). An overlappingof the historyof philosophywith the historyand phiframeworkof the Centre losophy of science-these withinthe institutional Nationalde la Recherche Scientifique-alter the shape of Deleuze's career duringthe second decade. MichelFoucault,who throughouthis own career shared and acknowledged muchcommon groundwithDeleuze, registers, in his homage to Georges Canguilhem,the themes of investigationwithinthis environment: social and historical preconditions for thinking, institutional practices accompanying fields of knowledge, and ideology built into the theoretical formulationsof science. Foucaultalso provides a lucidsummary of a shared preoccupation to discover what was (in its chronology, consistent elements, historical conditions) the moment when the West for the first time affirmedthe autonomyand sovereigntyof its own rationality-Lutheran reform, "Copernican revolution,"Cartesian philosophy, Galilean mathematizationof nature, Newtonianphysics[.] On the other hand, to analyze the "present"moment and to seek, in terms of what the historyof reason had been, and also in terms of what its currentbalance sheet may be, what relation it is necessary to establish with this foundinggesture: rediscovery,recaptureof a forgottenmeaning, or return an anterior to etc.4 moment, completion, rupture, Haunting this investigation is a second set of issues deriving from an attempt to place the Enlightenmentwithinthis series. Its version of "scientific and technical rationality the development of productiveforces," its "hope" in attached to a "Revolution" apply a comparablyuniversalizingrationalism to to the politicalmanagement of social beings: Two centuries later,the Enlightenment returns:but not at all as a way for the West to take cognizance of its present possibilities and of the liberties to which it can have access, but as a way of interrogating it on its limits and on the powers which it has abused. Reason as despotic enlightenment.5
4. MichelFoucault,introduction Georges Canguilhem, the Normal to On and the Pathocomments Reidel,1978),xi. See also Foucault's logical, trans.C. R. Fawcett(Dordrecht: on the parallel"pointof rupture" and ("Structuralism Post-structuralism," 199), which Nietzsche affordedbothhimselfand Deleuze. 5. Foucault,introduction Canguilhem, the Normal, to On xii.

2 178 boundary / Spring1993 Foucault's "reasonas despotic enlightenment" translates intohis own analyses of the carceral in Discipline and Punish as well as Deleuze and Guattari's treatment of the order-word in their eventual collaborations. To the extent to which Foucault'sdescriptionof a proceduretowardthis conclusion sounds like a sociology of knowledge, it also invites comparisons: to work of the InstitutfOrSozialforschung;to KarlMannheimand Max Scheler, and backward along obvious lines to Max Weber and Georg Simmel, to Henri Bergson and GabrielTarde,to ThorsteinVeblen and George HerbertMead; to numerous predecessors to the same inquiry. Foucault's magisterial account of an inherited problematics of reason is too grand to measure Deleuze's actual productionduringthe 1950s and early 1960s. The bulkof his contributions-his pieces on Bergson, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Hume-were packaged tamely as introductorysurveys and collections. What distinguishes Deleuze's work on Nietzschehis two books, Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) and Nietzsche (1965), and the volumes he edited for the Gallimard of publication Nietzsche's works6from his other work was its effect. ImportingNietzsche into the academic environment had a shock value that Bergson, Spinoza, and Hume, either or individually as a cluster, did not have. Equallyimportant,Deleuze's focus on anti-Hegelianism in Nietzsche provideda lever against currentdiscussions of the logic of the dialectic and the phenomenology of the subject. That is, Nietzsche provided Deleuze with his own way of shifting away from dominantpreoccupations of the previousgeneration's discussion. The 1964 Royaumont colloquium on Nietzsche, a scholarly conference under the auspices of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and for which Deleuze providedthe summary analysis, yields a tidy sample of the tenor of dispute. In the midst of a discussion concerning the "necessity of negation," the "negationof negation,"and the contributionof "negation to elevating mankind,"Deleuze responded with what became his most characteristic argument throughoutthe next decade: One finds many examples of negativity throughout Nietzsche's texts, but one finds them subsumed under the heading of ressentiment, while "the directionof Nietzsche's philosophy is to expose and eliminate"this dialectical configurationby means of a transversing affirmation.7
Wilhelm 6. Friedrich Nietzsche,Oeuvresphilosophiquescompletes, ed. M.de Gandillac editionfollows The 1967 and following). Gallimard and Gilles Deleuze (Paris:Gallimard, edition.Inaddition, of the publication the Colli-Montinari Deleuze, withMichelFoucault, to providedan introduction volume5, Le gai savoir. Nietzsche (Paris:Minuit, 7. Cahiersde Royaumont: 1967), 36.

/ Nietzsche 179 Perry Deleuze's a to ForDeleuze,Hegelcomes progressively represent wholeinvenby predecessorsbased on toryof themes and preoccupations immediate and or (whether systematizations positivist subject-object identity historical These predilections becomethe largecategoriesthat need to dialectical): be displaced,andNietzschesuppliesthe required Deleuze'sNietzsche tool. and Philosophy, two Ressentiment the to especiallyitsfinal sections,"From Bad Conscience"and "TheOverman: the Dialectic," providethe Against is for Ressentiment used to framelogics argument this use of Nietzsche.8 of opposition,whileaffirmation assumes the roleof a translogical, transthe and forcecapableof avoiding chainof negation historical, transversing and reproduction Deleuze'sstatement thisthemewill of opposition. through continueto echo as one of poststructuralism's durable most slogans. Deleuze'sprecisetargetsin 1964-aside from othercolloquium participants,who had somehow managedto misreadNietzsche-are easily in Deleuze'saccountof the school roomsof his mythologized retrospect. own educationgives representative to Alquieand significance Ferdinand Jean Hyppolite, "twoprofessors, whomI likedand admired lot ... [one] a harnessedto the serviceof Cartesian dualisms. other. . rhythmically The out Hegelian withhisfist,hanging wordson the beats."9 triads his beat[ing] This personalizedaccountaside, the moreconspicuousand provocative two presences-and implied targets-from the prior decades wouldhave been the existentialism Jean-PaulSartreand the legacy of phenomeof ClaudeLevi-Strauss two years had, nologyfromMaurice Merleau-Ponty.10 Two before,assailed Sartrein La Pensee sauvage.11 years later,Jacques
8. For concise summariesof the varietyof anti-Hegelianism posed by Nietzsche and see KeithPearson's reviewin Radical Philosophy38 (1984): 35-37, and Philosophy, VincentDescombes's commentsin his firstchapterof ModernFrenchPhilosophy,1-8. 9. Gilles Deleuze with Claire Parnet,Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinsonand Barbara Columbia Press, 1987), 12. (New York: Habberjam University 10. Itis worthregistering that both Deleuze and Guattari make consistentlyaffectionate remarksconcerningSartre. For Deleuze's own university days, Sartrewas "thebreath of fresh air . . . an intellectual who singularly changed the situationof the intellectual" (Dialogues, 12). Guattari "owe[s]a lot"to Sartre,"notso much for the consistency of his theoreticalcontribution, the opposite-for the way he goes off at tangents, for but all his mistakes and the good faith in which he makes them"(Felix Guattari, Molecular Revolution:Psychiatryand Politics,trans. MarySheed [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984], 27). 11. L6vi-Strauss's comments compete withMartin Heidegger'sin Sartre'seclipse from prominence."Uberden Humanismus," althoughwrittenin 1947, was not publishedin translationuntil 1957. As a convenience, Claude Levi-Strauss serves as a boundary where the resurfacing Frenchanthropology, of fortified linguistic marker, models and by

2 180 boundary / Spring1993 Derridawould invoke an argumentin line with Deleuze and, in turn,against structuralism: As a turningtoward the presence, lost or impossible, of the absent origin, this structuralistthematic of broken immediateness is thus the sad, negative, nostalgic, guilty,Rousseauist facet of the thinking of freeplay of which the Nietzschean affirmation-the joyous affirmation of the freeplay of the worldand withouttruth,withoutorigin, offered to an active interpretation-would be the other side.12 The themes of another side, a thirdroad, and a beyond continued to shore up a variety of specific debates in the next decade; Nietzsche's primaryrole in this earlier moment was to inspireconfidence in an alternative. Vincent Descombes is probablycorrectto describe this early use of a Nietzsche as primarily local phenomenon, an affairof the syllabus, taking place within institutionalconfines and being of primaryconcern to those engaged in teaching philosophywithinthe French universitysystem.13The public addressed by Klossowski, Foucault,and Deleuze in the Royaumont colloquiumwas, after all, a small group of professionals already interested in Nietzsche. The 1966 Johns Hopkinssymposium, at which Derridaspoke, status ("overone hundredhumanistsand social scienclaimed international tists from the United States and eight other countries gathered in Baltimore"14), although Derrida'sprovocative role remained withinthe purview of, to use Guattari'shigh-spiritedlanguage of the next decade, "thetechnocrats of ideas."15 Withinthe French academy, an immediate consequence of this atmosphere of debate was the formationof study groups, such as the Groupe de Recherches sur I'EnseignementPhilosophique. Deleuze's
discourse:one, challengedtwo lines of philosophical bearingthe headingstructuralism, fromwithinacademicconfines,althoughwithechoes outside,underthe bannerof WestdedicatedLaPensee sauvage to Merleau-Ponty); ern Marxism (even thoughLevi-Strauss withinthe fromoutside, but with strong reverberations the other, Existenzphilosophie, emerged academy. Again, as a convenience, it is worthnotingthat poststructuralism as almost immediately, thoughto filla vacuum. 12. Jacques Derrida,"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses of the HumanSciand ences," in The Languages of Criticism the Sciences of Man,ed. RichardMacksey Johns Hopkins and EugenioDonato(Baltimore: Press, 1970), 264. University within French the of of 13. Descombes emphasizes the peculiarity the "cult the Syllabus" institution, especiallyas itformsthe basis forthe state exams forthe teachingof philosophy.See ModernFrenchPhilosophy,5-6. 14. Derrida, Languages, ix. 238. Molecular 15. Guattari, Revolution,

Perry/ Deleuze'sNietzsche 181 primaryrole, however, was to continue doing what he had been doing, with the unremarkableassumption that the easiest way to change a syllabus was simply to alter the reading list. A cautious notion of popular is needed to comprehend the second period of Deleuze's career, his continued use of Nietzsche, and his role as a conduit for a reception of Nietzsche. Beginningwith the 1968 publication of Difference et repetition and extending through the series of collaborations with Felix Guattari,which culminatedin A ThousandPlateaus in 1980, Deleuze played two roles: He taught as professor of philosophy; and he found himself included in the ranks of a journalisticinvention, a corps of intellectuals who increasinglyoccupied the space in the popularmedia that was formerly reserved for an artistic avant-garde. One consequence of the invention of this broader audience was that the lineage of a "counterphilosophy,"16 withinwhich Nietzsche had appeared exemplary,opened out toward the possibility of a differentgenre of presentation. Deleuze had invoked this possibility early, thinkingof his writingas a mixtureof "crime novel" and "science fiction,"similar to the way Foucault would later rehistories as "novels."17 flect on his own institutional Here, again, Nietzsche and the lent assurance with his deprecation of "professorialphilosophy"'" of a book to "carryus beyond all books."19 promise Deleuze's first product of this second period, Difference et repetition, is notable for anticipatingthis notion of a wider audience, although neither it nor any of the collaborativeworksthat come afterit can be considtrans. D. B. Allison,in The New Nietzsche, ed. 16. Gilles Deleuze, "NomadThought," DavidAllison(New York: cited in my text as NT. Dell, 1977), 149. Thisworkis hereafter 17. Gilles Deleuze, Differenceet repetition(Paris:PUF,1968), 3; MichelFoucault,"The in Historyof Sexuality," Power/Knowledge:Selected Interviewsand Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York:Pantheon,1980), 193. These commentscan easily be inflated, to (or especiallyto argue aboutgenre boundaries theirabsence). Itis important underline Deleuze's self-understanding-parallel but aside from,his numerousinvocationsof to, d'art": There is a fundamental betweenthe arts, science and philoso"rapport "l'oeuvre of over the other.Each is creative.The objectof phy.There is no privilege one discipline science is to create withfunctions,the objectof artis to create withsensory assemblies, the object of philosophy to create withconcepts"("Entretien," is L'autre journal8 [1985]: 13). This trainof thoughtis elaboratedin Gilles Deleuze and FelixGuattari, Qu'est-ce et is cited in my que la philosophie?(Paris:Minuit, 1991).Difference r6p6tition hereafter text as Difference. 18. Friedrich WilhelmNietzsche, UntimelyMeditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (CamPress, 1983), 137. bridge:Cambridge University 19. Friedrich WilhelmNietzsche, The Gay Science, trans.Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage,1974), 248.

2 182 boundary / Spring1993 in ered "popular" the loose sense of writingto patronize a diverse reading public. Diff6rence et repetition has direct lines of continuityto Deleuze's earlier work:Itrecaptures the centralterm, difference, from his 1956 essay on Bergson,20it is sustained by consistent reference to Nietzsche, and it restates the talismanic argument of the Royaumontcolloquiumby criticizing a logic based on identity,analogy, and opposition. Nietzsche's eternal returnbecomes repetition, leading to a moment of intensityand difference; the nearest correlativeof such a moment of emergence is the creative act, the work of art. That parallel moments belong to other realms of concept formation and theorizing is clear, as well, from sections of Diff6rence et repetition devoted to philosophy,mathematics, and life sciences. Although humblysubmittedas his dissertation, Diff6rence et repetition exhibits the extravagance and breadthof survey that the later collaborations with Guattariwillcrystallize into a style. This kindof admixturehas ample precedents (with Nietzsche himself as an example), although it is perhaps most reminiscentof the polyhistorsof the beginningof this century. Manyof these scholars are noted in the endearinglygrotesque bibliography that closes the book: 20 complete works and 150 diverse titles are annotated as contributingspecifically to subcategories of Deleuze's two guiding terms, repetition and difference. The bibliography may not be "exhaustive," as Deleuze warns in introducingit, but it does contain the assortment of references a reader willsubsequently expect of Deleuze: Sollers and Duns Scotus, Althusser and Borges, Carnot and Finnegan's Wake, Renouvier and Butor,Tarde and Carroll,et cetera. Even if readers have subsequently learned to be blase about the procedure,in the wake of similarextravagant displays by others, something of an originalfreshness and daring remains in this attempt to avoid the boundaries of specialized disciplines. Intensity,the workingnotionthat emerges fromDiff6rence et repetito of becomes the last transformation Nietzsche's "joyousaffirmation" tion, evolve specifically in reference to Nietzsche and withina context of discussion based deliberately in the historyof philosophy.The etymology back to Nietzsche will remain through subsequent mutations-delire, desire, and assemblage. Deleuze finds occasion to mention Nietzsche in nearly every subsequent work; however, it is a Nietzsche by way of allusion and not a new application. Difference et repetition is Deleuze's summation. That it represents his first majorattempt to go beyond Nietzsche is also clear; as such, it shares ground with numerous attempts to fillin the blanks of Nietz20. Gilles Deleuze, "La conception de la diff6rencechez Bergson,"Etudes bergsoniennes 4 (1956):79-112.

/ Nietzsche 183 Perry Deleuze's Deleuzetakes unfinished book.More last sche's provocatively particularly, Klossowski's Heidegger's) and, (not up Nietzsche'seternalreturn following within with it lead, transforms intoa notionof difference repetition, a sideat the artisticas the specificcreativemoment.Deleuze surfaces glance within and withan "inscription difference "inof identity" an accompanying whichhe can then use to go behinda twenty-five-hundred-year tensity," to of of tradition "thesubordination difference opposition, analogy,resemthat all the aspects of mediation" have confined Westernthinking blance, to "representation" 48). Deleuze himselflater reflects light(Diff6rence, du heartedlyon this attemptat a "renversement platonisme,"21 although the bizarre clusterof vocabulary Deleuzeaccumulates essentiallyremains withhim,up to and including collaborations Guattari: with the intensities, the sense of nonsense, nomads,multiplicities, chaosmos,schizophrenia, In and the of delirium, cellularity, pluralism. addition, promise a devolution, of traditions thinking, the like possiblyglimpsedeven withinantagonistic of continuesto be a subjectto flirt with. history philosophy, Deleuze emerges witha reformulated imageof "dionysiac thinking" thatpromisesto transversea Cartesian notionof "clear (Diff6rence, 332) and distinct to ideas"confined a thinking subject.Nietzschepointsthe way to "a scintillating worldof metamorphoses, communicating of intensities, of differenceswithindifferences,hints,inspirations expirations" and (Difstated,of moving grandiloquently ference, 313). Itis thisprospect,however those of subjectandman, beyonduniversalizing representations, including that Deleuze has gleanedfromhis reading Nietzscheand has restated of in a vocabulary his own. Deleuze laterqualifiesNietzsche'sattempt: of He could "onlysketch in somethingembryonic not yet functional."22 and
this Fulfilling promise of "something... functional"remains Deleuze's pre-

the occupation throughout nextdecade,andittakesnumerous shapes-as at as machine," a "pragmatics" "schizoanalysis" the serviceof a "desiring a war At of driving "nomadic machine." the beginning thisdecade, however, withhis own two "embryonic" et Difference repetition Logique and works, du sens, Deleuze is contentto promote "thejoy of diversity, practical the of and critique all mystifications,"23 to pursuethese underthe sanctionof
his reading of Nietzsche. By all accounts, the 1972 Cerisy-la-Salle colloquiumon Nietzsche is
21. Gilles Deleuze, Logiquedu sens (Paris:Minuit, 1969), 292. 22. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault,trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: of University Minnesota Press, 1988), 130. 23. Deleuze, Logiquedu sens, 324.

2 1993 184 boundary / Spring the high-water mark the French of of poststructuralist reception Nietzsche. The papers and discussionshave the tone of a highecumenicalcouncil, and the range of participants indicatesthe measure of attentionNietzsche receives in the years immediately ahead:Jean-LucNancy,Jacques and SarahKofman, Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe FrancoisLyotard, all to Nietzscheintothe AngeleKremer-Marietti,of whomcontinue integrate is climate.Deleuze'scontribution, "Nomad intellectual Thought," striking, in reference Nietzsche.Deleuze to however, thatitmakesonlyparenthetical he made in detail,but his versionof alludes to arguments has previously with Nietzsche is summaryand not a fresh reading.The "aphorism," its to the and signalsthe possibility "exteriority" its ability "transverse frame," withphilosophy" of "a new kindof book"(NT,144).24Nietzsche's"break of the way at the "levelof method" avoid the "tragedy interito opens withits anguish,solitude,andguilt."Illegitimate misunderstandings" ority," or socialistappropriation the absorption of Nietzsche-whether by national with"legiticontrasted into of by phenomenology a "cult interiority"-are sort of mate misunderstandings"the type Deleuzeadvocates.Thislatter is or revolutionary capable of as characterized "schizophrenic joy," laughter of thinking 146-49). abouta "transmutation" (NT, bringing is to The notableaspect of Deleuze'scontribution the colloquium of its avoidanceof a new and directreading Nietzsche'stexts. Instead,it of the concentrateson a program: construction "awarmachinewhichwill of an "amalgam forces,"gaina state apparatus," not recreate generating instrument and a intensity," assembling strategic ing access to a "pulsional of for an assaulton the "bureaucrats purereason" (NT,145-49). Inshort, tradition the turnof the century.He a from Deleuze is reactivating French this continuesthroughout periodto memorialize Nietzsche,but the lanwith inthe collaborations FelixGuattari, especially guage of his production,
from Anti-Oedipus (1972) through Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991),

as as of evokes othersources:the totalcritique rationality a state apparatus the of in articulated GeorgesSorel'snotion diremption, fluxand multiplicity
are 24. The papersand discussionsfromthe 1972Cerisy-la-Salle colloquium publishedin the two volumes of Nietzsche aujourd'hui (Paris:10/18, 1973).The rangeof participants Foucault has broadenedconspicuouslyin contrastto the 1964 Royaumont colloquium; registers some of the difference:"Itis not at all true that Nietzsche appeared in 1972. He appeared in 1972 for people who were Marxists duringthe '60s and who emerged fromMarxism way of Nietzsche. Butthe firstpeople who had recourseto Nietzsche by were not lookingfor a way out of Marxism. They wanteda way out of phenomenology" and 199). ("Structuralism Post-structuralism,"

/ Nietzsche 185 Perry Deleuze's Tarde's of of HenriBergson'selaboration the duree, Gabriel sociologyof and and The desire, invention, imitation, Peguy'simagesof warrior-saints. leveredopen by Deleuze'sreading Nietzschebecomes progresof space French vitalism. sivelymoreconsonantwithturn-of-the-century One aspect of this reemergenceof themes fromFrenchvitalism if The "new" Nietzneeds to be underlined, onlyforjournalistic purposes: sche, as it seems to evolve frompoststructuralist discussions,is not very new. The majorNietzschereceptionin Francetook place at the turnof the centuryand within generation iconoclastic a of intellectuals were who that very close to being Nietzsche'scontemporaries; is, they were born withina decade beforeor afterthe middle the nineteenth of This century. earlierFrenchNietzscheoperated conventional very apparatuses: through came through Henri Albert's whichcoincided withthe translations, Support of zur folposthumous publication DerWille Macht; exegesis andinfluence lowed(as canvased,in retrospect, GenevieveBianquis Nietzscheen in by France [1929]);there was a spilling over by way of quotation allusion, or in conspicuousinstances,as withBergsonand Sorel;and there especially was a driftintoliterary with production, obviousexemplarsas Valeryand Gide. This literary current not and continued, at all subterraneously, was reissued by laterfictionist-philosophers, as Georges Bataille,Pierre such Klossowski,and MauriceBlanchot.Perhapsmost importantly, however, this earlierNietzschereception was mythologized JulienBenda in La by trahisondes clercs (1927) and in termsresonant,mutatismutandis, with the two majorsubsequentscoldingsof intellectuals the century: in Georg
Lukacs's Die Zerstorung der Vernunft (1954) and Jurgen Habermas's Der Diskurs der Moderne (1985). philosophische

If one simplyextractsthese three books and ignoresthe satellite is discussions,a fable beginsto emerge.Benda'scontribution aimedspeat vitalism at Lukacsadcifically French (andparenthetically pragmatism). dresses "romantic buthis specifictargetis Lebensphilosoanticapitalism," and and phie (with side-glancesat pragmatism French vitalism) a sociology that had abandonedeconomicsas its centralcategory.Habermas directs his attention Frenchpoststructuralism ina significant to to excursion, (and, his own immediate Horkheimer Adorno's and Dialecticof the predecessors,
Enlightenment).

Inallthree,Nietzscheis the turning the point,the keyfordeciphering misdirection a huge expanse of discourse.Betweenthem (although of in the name of quitedifferent Bendaand Lukacs bandtogetherto programs), indict whatotherwisemight intelappearto be a verydiverseset of virtuoso

2 1993 186 boundary / Spring those who readand firstreviewed second and third the lectuals,including volumesof Das Kapital-Sorel,Sombart, Veblen; and those whooperated at the edge of emerging precariously disciplines-Tarde,Simmel,Weber, and the Chicagoschool in sociology,and James and Bergsonunderthe headingof psychology.Perhapsthe strangestaspect of this fable is that when allthe proper names and movements bundled are togetherfromthis firstdecade of the century, one writer surfaceswho knewNietzsche's only workwell-Georg Simmel.Certainly, indictment both Benda and the of Lukacsis of a climateof thought, sharedtendencyto betrayalor a cola lectivealignment destroyreason.Itis thisbundling, assembling, to this that versionof Nietzsche. generates a boogeyman Incontrast, Habermas's version the fablehas considerable of speciIn large partowingto Deleuze, Nietzschedoes come to occupy a ficity. list. "Nietzsche, place inthe reading Derrida's significant Spurs,Foucault's and Genealogy,History," Deleuze'sNietzscheand Philosophyare readof erly exegeses. By the time formerstudentsappearwith provocations theirown-Andre Glucksmann's Maitres Les or Bernard-Henri penseurs La a for Levy's Barbarie visagehumain, example-they, too,willbe outfitted withfreshreferencesto Nietzsche.Habermas brings advantageof also the committed considerable effort disentangling to salvablework havingalready of his predecessorswithin Frankfurt the schoolfrom Nietzschean disturbing motifs.Habermas's have the additional of referenceto examples weight a Weimar intellectual moment when Nietzschewas climate,to a historical and within periodto go the very much"inthe air,"25 of numerous attempts that so into socialism. beyond him,a moment transmuted, quickly, national the time Habermas entersthe dispute,however, had By poststructuralism itselfbecome boundas a period.Foucault's work,by the time of his own death in 1984, had takena major shifttoward "careforthe self";Deleuze had turnedtowardhis morecloseted studiesof the movies;and, withina is at convenience,by Luc year,the boundary marked, least forjournalistic and AlainRenautin LaPensee 68 (1985)and 68-86 (1987). Ferry Intermsof Deleuze'sown oeuvre,the 1972 Cerisy-la-Salle conference had markedan end point.Deleuze had alreadydone his share to a manufacture new Nietzsche.Ifthe effectof this advocacywas ultimately in of institutional a domestication Nietzsche,resulting a tolerant broadening it than antiphilosophy, did, at least, open a territory of the syllabusrather that Deleuze couldfillby reaching backand reassembling wide rangeof a
25. Habermas, Kulturund Kritik,239.

Nietzsche 187 / Perry Deleuze's themes. Deleuze remarks 1972) how he had been (in turn-of-the-century
"reproach[ed]... for having written even on Bergson. Perhaps because

Theydon'tknowhow muchhatredfocused they knownothingof history. at the beginning" on Bergson (Nothing,113). Nietzsche had served the this whiletraditions out growing of purposeof reinstating auraof outlawry, lost had and neo-Kantianism, pragmatism largely thisedge through vitalism, and routinesof application dissemination. elaboration the of If one returns, then, to Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome,their critiqueof Nietzsche seems less of a surprise.Deleuze A of and Guattari's ThousandPlateauscomes as the summation a decarrier a "legitimate of That cade of collaboration. Deleuzewas the original is of misunderstanding" Nietzscheto the collaboration clear, but, at the needs to be understood essentiallypostas same time, the collaboration The to fromits beginning. point be stressed is notthatGuattari Nietzschean he does-but thatDeleuze adds significant modifications-which certainly debts he felt he owed had alreadypaidwhateverpersonalor institutional in Nietzsche and had alreadybroadenedhis own philosophizing consointeractionist nancewiththemesfromTarde's process sociology,Bergson's abstractionist aesthetics. and philosophy, Worringer's with The collaboration FelixGuattari began in 1969,the same year
that the firsttwo books-Diff6rence et repetitionand Logique du sens, both

of whichbear a uniquely Deleuzeanstyle-were published, the year and in whichDeleuzetooka post at the Universite ParisVIII Vincennes. de at Guattari came to the collaboration a veteran twodecades of skirmishas of within Parti exclusion the Communist He and,finally, Frangais. ing, reform, also brought different a fifteenyears professional perspective, spent having as a practicing and studentof Jacques Lacanand, psychoanalyst former in reform as an editorand writer and later,as an experimenter clinical prothe and of treatment. moting changewithin institutions practices psychiatric In addition a long investigation applications linguistics psychoto of of to with his acquaintance CharlesS. Peirce's analytictheorizing (specifically, Guattari a that writing), brought style of renegadeintelligence both commomentwhen plementedDeleuze'sstyle and echoed an earlierhistorical intellectuals notonlyprofessors headsof faculwere or conspicuousFrench ties-like Bergsonor Durkheim-but were also retired judges, engineers, and bookstore such as Tarde, owners, Sorel,and Peguy. The popularity the firstproduct the collaboration, of of Anti-Oedipus, owed muchto the fact thatGuattari's was already profession very mucha bothbecause of the provocations Jacques of topicof popular journalism,

2 1993 188 boundary / Spring the in Lacanandthrough antipsychiatry movement whichGuattari been had Whilea Nietzschereception be somewhat central. confined an esoas may tericaffair highereducation,mentalhealthseems to be a subjectmore of accessible to a public immediately purview. the demonstrates duplication the modelof psychoof Anti-Oedipus familial as a horizon; representation," itechoes within political analysis,"the the practice psychoanalysis, adjustment the individual the Oediof its of to "theater" the nation-state's of political pal model, replicatesthe ordering available revolutionary for andthe fieldof thought apparatus change,which The dominated the "despotic schizois similarly by signifier." "revolutionary whichDeleuze and Guattari espouse, must,therefore,counter phrenia," a at machine," "libidilevel;a "desiring "capitalist paranoia" a microscopic can onlybe constructed the "most at and naleconomy[,] a libidinal politics" has minusculelevel,"at a level where mutation a chance of competing into motifs stillthreaded the are withreproduction.26 Deleuze'sNietzschean withan affirmative linked of Thismicropolitics desireis explicitly argument: will and liberating to power.This theme, however,is mixedtogetherwith Desire:"You haveto createit, knowhow creativeintelligence. Bergsonian at yourriskand peril. Those who to create it, take the right directions, .... linkdesire to lack,the long columnof croonersof castration, clearlyindiDeleuze bad like cate a long resentment, an interminable conscience."27 his early versionof a Nietzscheanescape routefromnegation, repeats as the figuresof libidinal although termsare nowtransformed biopsychical and revolutionary change at the levelof molecules. That the broader public addressed by Anti-Oedipuswas not to satisfactory Deleuzeis suggested by subsequentcomments. altogether him a personaltaste of the consequences of enteringa gave Popularity and for with orientedindustry, its apparatuses promoting mamass market at that to It topicality. is important register Deleuzefulfilled least nipulating in the of one requirement thisindustry, promotional interview, an exemplary his Deleuze reevaluated own experiencein this arena,however, fashion.28 and used it for his blanketdismissalof the mediaevent and hit parade the Levy by strategiesexploited Bernard-Henri to promote set of authorshe editedfor Grassetto the rankof nouveaux philosophes.A second conseMarkSeem, trans. RobertHurley, 26. Gilles Deleuze and FelixGuattari, Anti-Oedipus, and Helen R. Lane (New York: 1977),49-55. Viking, 27. Deleuze withParnet,Dialogues,91. 1972-90 (Paris: are 28. Mostof these interviews collectedinGillesDeleuze,Pourparlers: Minuit, 1990).

/ Nietzsche 189 Perry Deleuze's of was quence of the popular reception Anti-Oedipus a significant attempt The neovitalist remained by Deleuze to qualifyhis own position. program ecstasies, and supported-a creativeemergence,motivated intensities, by desire-but Deleuzedistancedhimself fromthe imageof refsubstantially erence he hadfoundserviceableinAnti-Oedipus: we haveneverseen "No, .. 116).He movedawayfrom"schizoanalysis" schizophrenics ."(Nothing, and towardbroader notionslike"minoritarian becoming."
A Thousand Plateaus, with the thirdsection of Anti-Oedipus, "Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men,"and Kafka: Towarda Minor Literature

of and servingas prologues,stands as the culmination Guattari Deleuze's collaboration as the significant for attempting redefinean inand text to tended public.A ThousandPlateaus maintains exceeds the tone of or maverick set in earlierworkby both authors.Beneaththe extravagance of the invented figure rhizomatic thinking, lastbookextendsa conspicuously and pilfered to a to vocabulary lavishproportions, constantattempt pose "a new classification system"(Plateaus, 347),as thoughDeleuzeandGuattari were furiously tryingto stay ahead of a perpetually problematreforming ics. "Linesof flight" and "planesof consistency," multiplicities" "flat and "territorialization" "de-" "reterritorializations," and and "fuzzyaggregates," of and "continuums intensity" "machinic assemblages"-these samplethe mode. Specifictransformations the earlier from collaborations notable. are is as "Schizoanalysis" largelyreplacedby "pragmatics" the model for a criticalendeavor;the "desiring machine" transformed the less freis into netic activity "assemblage." A Thousand of As Plateausenacts rhizomatic it an moreincantation vocabulary, spite than in thinking, proliferates idiom, of the suggestionof the glossarythatcloses the book. Nietzsche'spresence in A Thousand Plateauscorresponds the to Deleuze and Guattari advancedin Rhizome.Nietzsche is had qualifiers the of a or responsiblefordemonstrating "failure" establishing fixed "plan for plane,""a pure'stationary and, process'forthinking," further, showing that this failureis necessarilybuiltintothe planor plane (Plateaus,26869). Thissame disguisedhomageto Nietzscheis restated,in less opaque to translation Nietzsche of language,in Deleuze's1983preface the English and Philosophy: "Without doubtthis is the most important pointof Nietzsche's philosophy: radical the transformation the imageof thoughtthat of 29 we createforourselves." Although Nietzschestill demonstrating failure, by
29. GillesDeleuze, Nietzscheand Philosophy, trans.HughTomlinson Colum(NewYork: bia University Press, 1983), xiii.

2 1993 190 boundary / Spring for modeof thinking. laborof fulfilling The providesthe charter a liberating this provocation passed on to others;a creative has enactment required, is a rhizomatic thinking. A Thousand PlateausrepresentsDeleuzeand Guattari's versionof this creativerealmbeyondthe dominance metaphor, of ideology,and signifier is equallyimmune notionsof "original, andsavage experiand to free ence [that]lies beneath knowledge, phenomenology as wouldhave it."30 The figurefor thinking a Bergsonian "a they pose requires methodology, method(a critique false problems the invention of and of problematizing genuine ones),"31and a Soreliannotionof forces thatcan be assembled to possessionof the state. Their strategically oppose poweras the captured in and effortsconsistin naming placing"arborescent thinking," exposingits of branching and in invoking constructhe oppositions, dominating image war at of tionof a "nomadic machine" the boundary Platonic Cartesian or rationalism. or bureaucratic-state they reUsingthe languageof vitalism,
assert a concept of "life"consisting in "vitalforces ... entering into new

and combinations composingnewfigures."32 to to inspiteof the profuseevocations mutation, becoming,and Yet, Plato realizethatA Thousand littlepenetration to emergence, it requires of list. teaus is a barely very disguisedreading Itis a greatstir-pot reference, et muchwithinthe formDeleuze had developedin Diff6rence repetition, work" formerstuby althoughnow Deleuze includesas yet "unpublished ifresistively-intothe mold dents. Deleuzehas placedhimself firmly-even The intellectual. modelspace held up to a readership of the professorial Thereis something room. Plateausis an extendedseminar forA Thousand to boldinthisattempt sufficewithresourcesat hand,since a wholetradition with intellectuals whomDeleuze has a kinship-including of professorial had Mauss,Bergson,andTarde-has eventually Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, lecturefroma chair forum the public of benefitof the unique the additional at the Collegede France. Plateaushave not of the Theyearsfollowing publication A Thousand the for to been sympathetic the "search allies"33 which languageandproto of cedure of the collaborations appeal.The authority JurgenHabermas's
30. Deleuze, Foucault,82. and BarbaraHabberjam 31. Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism,trans. HughTomlinson (New
York:Zone, 1988), 35.

32. Deleuze, Foucault,91. 54. 33. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus,

/ Nietzsche 191 Perry Deleuze's in of and of critique the "aporias" poststructuralism the moodcaptured the Guattari termfordismissal,"lapensee 68,"leavea disconsolate sloganistic these same years, of addressingthe "yearsof winter" the 1980s. During and fora "creative" sharedendeavorby art, Deleuze expresses nostalgia science, and philosophy, epoch, when philosoagainst"animpoverished 34 and 'on'... universal values." rights eternal physeeks refugein reflection the imagesof Bouvard Pecuchetto and MichelFoucault earlier had posed his Flaubert's Deleuze's (and, presumably, own)work.35 characterize pair in the twentieth of charactershas become a favorite century, surpassing the salon des refuses and poetes mauditsas figuresfor the intellectual. effortsto reinscribe texts by others Bouvardand Pecuchet'scompulsive to of andto compilea dictionary receivedideascontinue hauntpresentproin when Nietzschean duction.Deleuze'swriting the last period,however, againbecomes a termfordismissal,resemblesmorecloselythe lettresde Men": drewhis "Life Infamous of cachet fromwhichFoucault glimpsesof or "obscure men, based on the discourseswhichin misfortune in ragethey exchangedwithpower."36

34. Deleuze, "Entretien," 12. 35. MichelFoucault,"Theatrum in PracPhilosophicum," Language, Counter-Memory, CornellUniversity tice, ed. and trans. DonaldBouchard Press, 1977), 188. (Ithaca: 36. Michel Foucault,"The Life of InfamousMen,"in Michel Foucault:Power, Truth, and Strategy,ed. M.Morris P. Patton,trans.P. Foss and M.Morris (Sydney:Feral,1977), 80. Thisessay introduces Foucault's of culledfromofficial documents. anthology "novels"