Academic year 2013-2014

Tuesday afternoons, 14.00-17.00

Location: Stijlkamer van Ravensteijn , Kromme Nieuwe Gracht 80, Utrecht University.

Organised by: the OSL (Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap) with the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University

Convened by: Professor Rosi Braidotti and Dr. Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University)

Registration: osl-fgw@uva.nl (details: see below)

 

With guest speaker Prof. Gregg Lambert ( Syracuse University)

 

The seminar consists of eight sessions in English which will run throughout the academic year 2013-14 in Utrecht. Research masters and PhD students, as well as staff members, are welcome to participate. Students can get credits for their participation by attending regularly (attendance will be registered) and writing a final paper. Each session of the three-hour seminar will consist of an in-depth reading of a text by Gilles Deleuze (with or without Felix Guattari), sometimes alongside secondary texts by other theorists or philosophers. This year the Deleuze seminar will focus primarily on his philosophy of literature as developed in Deleuze’s last book publication: Essays Critical and Clinical to which we will add additional primary texts, notably Kafka and The Exhausted: Beckett. Starting with his ideas on literature and life we will focus every session on a major author of the recent past and see in what way Deleuze conceptualizes this authors writings and thus introduces us to a radically new theory of language. We will also be referring to selected sections of the Abécedaire  and other visual material.

 

Participants are expected to acquire the literature themselves, but wherever possible we will make pdf files available.

 

SESSION 1: INTRODUCTION (Braidotti and Dolphijn)

 

September 17, 2013

 

Reading Material:

Essays Critical and Clinical :

The Introduction by Daniel W. Smith

Chapter 1. Literature and Life (CC)

Chapter 2. Introduction Rhizome (ATP)

 

Please consult L’ Abécédaire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmn5eHe-EA

(L of Literature; D for Desire and Q for Question)

 

SESSION 2: GUEST LECTURER Prof. Gregg Lambert (Syracuse University, USA)

 

October 1, 2013

 

Reading Material:

Essays Critical and Clinical:

Chapter 8. Whitman.

Chapter 9. What Children Say

Chapter 13. He Stuttered

 

Dialogues (with Claire Parnet) : ‘On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature’.

 

SESSION 3: VITALIST WRITERS VIRGINIA WOOLF (Braidotti)

 

October 29, 2013

 

Reading Material:

A Thousand Plateaus: Chapter 10, section:  ‘Memoirs of a Molecule’ (p.272-286)

The Deleuze Reader: Chapter 2: ‘On Becoming”; Chapter 16: ‘On Desire’.

The Deleuze Dictionary: Entries on : ‘Woman’; ‘Writing’; ‘Chaos’; ‘Percept + Literature’.

 

Deleuze’s class on Virginia Woolf:

http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/article.php3?id_article=401

 

SESSION 4: MELVILLE (Dolphijn and Braidotti)

 

December 3, 2013

 

Reading Material:

Essays Critical and Clinical:

10. Bartleby; or, The Formula (CC)

The Deleuze Reader: Chapter 6; Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.

The Deleuze Dictionary: Entries on : ‘Lines of Flight’; ‘Lines of Flight+Politics’. Literature’.

 

Please consult L’ Abécédaire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DskjRer95s

(V for Voyage)

 

SESSSION 5:  KAFKA (Braidotti and Dolphijn)

 

January 21, 2014

 

Reading Material:

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Kafka, Towards a Minor Literature

The Deleuze Dictionary: Entries on : ‘Capture’;’Capture+Politics’.

 

Please consult L’ Abécédaire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DskjRer95s

(S for Style)

 

SESSION 6: ARTAUD (Dolphijn)

 

February 11, 2014

 

Reading Material:

Essays Critical and Clinical:

15. To Have Done with Judgment (CC)

The Deleuze Dictionary: Entries on : ‘Body’; ‘Bodies without Organs’; ‘Lines of Flight’.

A Thousand Plateaus:

6: November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself A Body Without Organs?

 

Listen to Artaud’s Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXy7lsGNZ5A

 

SESSION 7: D.H. LAWRENCE (Braidotti and Dolphijn)

 

March 18, 2014

 

Reading Material:

Essays Critical and Clinical:

6. Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos (CC)

 

What is Philosophy?

Conclusion: From Chaos to the Brain

 

SESSION 8: SAMUEL BECKETT

 

May 13, 2014

 

Reading Material:

18. The Exhausted (CC)

The Deleuze Dictionary: Entries on : ‘Ethics’.

 

Please consult L’ Abécédaire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DskjRer95s

(J for Joy)

 

For all information regarding this seminar please contact : OSL-fgw OSL-fgw@uva.nl  or:  cfh@uu.nl .

 

Registration: Please send an e-mail, including a biographical text of up to 100 words stating your affiliation and motivation for the seminar, to Eloe Kingma, osl-fgw@uva.nl.

Deadline for registration September 1st.

At: Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University

Credits: 7.5 EC

Level: Research Master

Type: Tutorial (close reading)

Coordinator: Dr. Rick Dolphijn (r.dolphijn@uu.nl)

Between 1953 and 1993, Gilles Deleuze wrote about 20 books in which he talks of many different issues. Although the early part of his career was he mainly focusing on rewriting the History of Philosophy (with books on Bergson, Spinoza, Nietzsche and Hume) the more and more infused his philosophy with aesthetics. Starting with Proust (of which the first version was published in French in 1964) he continued this interest in books on Kafka (with Guattari), on Sacher-Masoch, on Lewis Carroll and on Francis Bacon. Famous are of course his two books on cinema and his increasing fascination with especially Anglo-American literature (for instance in Essays Critical and Clinical). After his death in 1995, the importance of Deleuze’s thinking has been recognized throughout academia and especially within the humanities he is at the moment probably the most cited author. In this tutorial we will try to get some insight in this fast growing interest in the work of Gilles Deleuze by reading some of his texts and some of those inspired by him.

Some of the literature to be discussed:

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Trans. Mark Lester, Charles Stivale. Ed. Constantin Boundas. New York: Columbia UP, 1990.
—. Francis Bacon: the Logic of Sensation. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. London & New York: Continuum, 2003.
—. Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. London: the Athlone Press, 1986.
— Cinema 2: The Time Image. Trans. Hugh Tominson and Robert Galeta. London: The Athlone Press, 1989.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burcell. New York: Columbia University Press. 1994.
Massumi, Brian. A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari. London, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Music Painting and the Arts. London, New York: Routlege: 2003
Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Literature. London, New York: Routledge, 2003
Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Cinema. London, New York: Routledge, 2003