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 subterranean the qualities of the rhizome, theirhomely figurefor thinking: 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 A ThousandPlateaus, trans. BrianMassumi sequently includedas the introduction of MinnesotaPress, 1987). The latterworkis hereaftercited in University (Minneapolis: my text as Plateaus. Press.CCC 2 20:1,1993.Copyright 0190-3659/93/$1.50. University boundary ? 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, the exteriority 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 ExHugh Tomlinson,"Nietzscheon the Edge of Town:Deleuze and Reflexivity," ceedingly 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 andthatfromwithout, whereresidual versionsof Nietzsche community

2 / Spring1993 176 boundary 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": Nietzsche in his other worksis clearlyapparent,there is no of the presence although or deafening reference . .. nor any attemptto wave the Nietzscheanflag for rhetorical An Interview withMichelFouand Post-structuralism: politicalends" (see "Structuralism Telos55 (1983):203. EarlyFrenchresponses demonstrate trans.JeremyHarding, cault," see Andr6 consonantreception: Nietzsch6ennes," Glucksmann, Critique "Premeditations Revue de M6taphyet qualit6," 213 (1965): 125-44; Angele Kremer-Marietti, "Diff6rence "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 VincentDescombes's chapterson Deleuze in ModernFrench in the same tradition 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 ThePhilosophiis best formulated by JurgenHabermas althoughfocused on Foucault, MITPress, 1987). Lawrence(Cambridge: trans. Frederick cal Discourse of Modernity, that Nietzsche "is [or should be] no longer His argumentis based on the proposition und Kritik 1968,"in Kultur [ein Nachwort] contagious"("ZuNietzsches Erkenntnistheorie Manfred is furthered Habermas's Frank, by position Suhrkamp,1973], 239). [Frankfurt: of Capitalism Deleuze's and Guattari's "TheWorldas Willand Representation: Critique trans.DavidBerger,Telos57 (1983):166-77; as Schizo-analysisand Schizo-discourse," of Deleuze and Noteson the Rhizome-thinking of 'Machines': "TheReality ChristaBOrger, Telos64 (1985):33-44. A neopragmatist trans. SimonSrebrny, perspectiveis Guattari," in Perspective," "Unsoundness 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 rupture, return to an anterior etc.4 moment, completion, 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 in the development of productiveforces," its "hope" attached to a "Revolution" to apply a comparablyuniversalizingrationalism 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 to Georges Canguilhem, On the Normal and the Pathocomments Reidel,1978),xi. See also Foucault's logical, trans.C. R. Fawcett(Dordrecht: on the parallel"pointof rupture" and Post-structuralism," ("Structuralism 199), which Nietzsche affordedbothhimselfand Deleuze. 5. Foucault,introduction to Canguilhem, On the Normal, xii.

2 / Spring1993 178 boundary 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 Nietzsche's works6publication from his other work was its effect. ImportingNietzsche into the academic environment had a shock value that Bergson, Spinoza, and Hume, either or as a cluster, did not have. Equallyimportant,Deleuze's focus individually 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 Gallimard 1967 and following). and Gilles Deleuze (Paris:Gallimard, edition.Inaddition, of the Colli-Montinari the publication Deleuze, withMichelFoucault, to volume5, Le gai savoir. providedan introduction Nietzsche (Paris:Minuit, 7. Cahiersde Royaumont: 1967), 36.

/ Deleuze's Nietzsche 179 Perry a wholeinvento represent ForDeleuze,Hegelcomes progressively by immediate predecessorsbased on toryof themes and preoccupations and historical or (whether systematizations positivist subject-object identity These become the that need to dialectical): predilections largecategories be displaced,andNietzschesuppliesthe required tool.Deleuze'sNietzsche and Philosophy, twosections,"From Ressentiment to the especiallyitsfinal Bad Conscience"and "TheOverman: the the Dialectic," provide Against is used frame for this use of Ressentiment to argument Nietzsche.8 logics of opposition,whileaffirmation assumes the roleof a translogical, transthe chainof negation andtransversing forcecapableof avoiding historical, and reproduction Deleuze'sstatement of thisthemewill opposition. through continueto echo as one of poststructuralism's mostdurable slogans. Deleuze'sprecisetargetsin 1964-aside from othercolloquium participants,who had somehow managedto misreadNietzsche-are easily in retrospect. Deleuze'saccountof the school roomsof his mythologized own educationgives representative to Ferdinand Alquieand significance Jean Hyppolite, "twoprofessors, whomI likedand admired a lot ... [one] harnessedto the serviceof Cartesian dualisms. Theother. . rhythmically out with triads hisfist,hanging his wordson the beats."9 beat[ing] Hegelian This personalizedaccountaside, the moreconspicuousand provocative two decades wouldhave presences-and implied targets-from the prior been the existentialism of Jean-PaulSartreand the legacy of phenomeClaudeLevi-Strauss had,two years nologyfromMaurice Merleau-Ponty.10 Twoyears later,Jacques before,assailed Sartrein La Pensee sauvage.11
8. For concise summariesof the varietyof anti-Hegelianism posed by Nietzsche and see Keith review in Radical Pearson's Philosophy, Philosophy38 (1984): 35-37, and 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, but the opposite-for the way he goes off at tangents, for 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 of Frenchanthropology, fortified marker, models and by linguistic

2 / Spring1993 180 boundary 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 local phenomenon, an affairof the syllabus, taking Nietzsche as primarily 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 thoughto filla vacuum. almost immediately, 12. Jacques Derrida,"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourses of the HumanSciand the Sciences of Man,ed. RichardMacksey ences," in The Languages of Criticism Johns Hopkins and EugenioDonato(Baltimore: Press, 1970), 264. University within the French of the Syllabus" of the "cult 13. Descombes emphasizes the peculiarity 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"'" all a us of book to books."19 "carry beyond 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 Power/Knowledge:Selected Interviewsand Other Writings, Historyof Sexuality," 1972-1977 (New York:Pantheon,1980), 193. These commentscan easily be inflated, to underline (ortheirabsence). Itis important especiallyto argue aboutgenre boundaries Deleuze's self-understanding-parallel to, but aside from,his numerousinvocationsof d'art": There is a fundamental betweenthe arts, science and philoso"rapport "l'oeuvre of one discipline over the other.Each is creative.The objectof phy.There is no privilege science is to create withfunctions,the objectof artis to create withsensory assemblies, the object of philosophy is to create withconcepts"("Entretien," L'autre journal8 [1985]: 13). This trainof thoughtis elaboratedin Gilles Deleuze and FelixGuattari, Qu'est-ce et r6p6tition is hereafter cited in my que la philosophie?(Paris:Minuit, 1991).Difference 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 / Spring1993 182 boundary in the loose sense of writingto patronize a diverse reading ered "popular" 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 Nietzsche's "joyousaffirmation" the last transformation becomes 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.

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

the nextdecade,andittakesnumerous occupation throughout shapes-as at the serviceof a "desiring as a "pragmatics" machine," "schizoanalysis" a "nomadic warmachine." Atthe beginning of thisdecade, however, driving withhis own two "embryonic" et Difference and Logique works, repetition du sens, Deleuze is contentto promote "thejoy of diversity, the practical of all mystifications,"23 and to pursuethese underthe sanctionof critique
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 Minnesota University Press, 1988), 130. 23. Deleuze, Logiquedu sens, 324.

2 / Spring 1993 184 boundary the high-water mark of the French of Nietzsche. poststructuralist reception 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 Sarah Derrida, Kofman, Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe FrancoisLyotard, allof whomcontinue to integrate Nietzscheintothe AngeleKremer-Marietti, is striking, climate.Deleuze'scontribution, "Nomad intellectual Thought," inthatitmakesonlyparenthetical reference to Nietzsche.Deleuze however, he has previously made in detail,but his versionof alludes to arguments with its Nietzsche is summaryand not a fresh reading.The "aphorism," to "transverse the frame," and its ability signalsthe possibility "exteriority" withphilosophy" of "a new kindof book"(NT,144).24Nietzsche's"break the of of interithe at "level method" to avoid the way "tragedy opens with its and misunderstandings" ority," anguish,solitude, guilt."Illegitimate orthe absorption socialistappropriation of Nietzsche-whether by national with"legiticontrasted intoa "cult of interiority"-are by phenomenology sort is of the type Deleuzeadvocates.Thislatter mate misunderstandings" or as "schizophrenic characterized joy,"capable of laughter revolutionary of a "transmutation" about (NT,146-49). thinking bringing is to the colloquium The notableaspect of Deleuze'scontribution of Nietzsche'stexts. Instead,it its avoidanceof a new and directreading of "awarmachinewhichwill the construction concentrateson a program: of forces,"gainan a state not recreate apparatus," generating "amalgam instrument andassembling a strategic intensity," ing access to a "pulsional of purereason" for an assaulton the "bureaucrats (NT,145-49). Inshort, tradition a French fromthe turnof the century.He Deleuze is reactivating this periodto memorialize continuesthroughout Nietzsche,but the lanwithFelixGuattari, in the collaborations especially guage of his production,
from Anti-Oedipus (1972) through Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991),

as as a state apparatus of rationality evokes othersources:the totalcritique the fluxand multiplicity of diremption, in GeorgesSorel'snotion articulated
are publishedin 24. The papersand discussionsfromthe 1972Cerisy-la-Salle colloquium 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 who had recourseto Nietzsche But the first Nietzsche. of fromMarxism people by way were not lookingfor a way out of Marxism. They wanteda way out of phenomenology" and Post-structuralism," 199). ("Structuralism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 / Spring 1993 188 boundary the antipsychiatry inwhichGuattari Lacanandthrough movement hadbeen Whilea Nietzschereception central. confined as an esomaybe somewhat tericaffair of highereducation,mentalhealthseems to be a subjectmore accessible to a public immediately purview. the duplication demonstrates of the modelof psychoAnti-Oedipus familial as itechoes within a political horizon; representation," analysis,"the the practice of psychoanalysis, its adjustment of the individual to the Oedi"theater" of the nation-state's political pal model, replicatesthe ordering the field of available for and thought revolutionary apparatus change,which The"revolutionary dominated schizois similarly bythe "despotic signifier." whichDeleuze and Guattari espouse, must,therefore,counter phrenia," a "libidiat a microscopic machine," level;a "desiring "capitalist paranoia" the can be constructed at anda libidinal naleconomy[,] "most politics" only has a chance of competing minusculelevel,"at a level where mutation intothe motifs arestillthreaded withreproduction.26 Deleuze'sNietzschean withan affirmative linked of desireis explicitly Thismicropolitics argument: willto power.This theme, however,is mixedtogetherwith and liberating Desire:"You haveto createit, knowhow creative intelligence. Bergsonian at risk and peril. Those who to create it, take the right directions, your .... linkdesire to lack,the long columnof croonersof castration, clearlyindiDeleuze bad conscience."27 likean interminable cate a long resentment, from route of a Nietzschean version his negation, escape early repeats as biopsychical the termsare nowtransformed figuresof libidinal although and revolutionary change at the levelof molecules. That the broader public addressed by Anti-Oedipuswas not to Deleuzeis suggested by subsequentcomments. satisfactory altogether him a personaltaste of the consequences of enteringa gave Popularity and maforpromoting withits apparatuses oriented market mass industry, at least thatDeleuzefulfilled to register Itis important topicality. nipulating inan exemplary the promotional of thisindustry, one requirement interview, his own experiencein this arena,however, Deleuze reevaluated fashion.28 and used it for his blanketdismissalof the mediaevent and hit parade the set of authorshe Levyto promote by Bernard-Henri strategiesexploited 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 collectedinGillesDeleuze,Pourparlers: 28. Mostof these interviews Minuit, 1990).

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

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

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

and composingnewfigures."32 combinations to becoming,and to mutation, in Yet, spiteof the profuseevocations A Thousand Plathat to realize littlepenetration to emergence, it requires of reference, list.Itis a greatstir-pot teaus is a barely very disguisedreading et repetition, muchwithinthe formDeleuze had developedin Diff6rence work" by formerstualthoughnow Deleuze includesas yet "unpublished if dents. Deleuzehas placedhimself firmly-even resistively-intothe mold The modelspace held up to a readership intellectual. of the professorial Thereis something room. Plateausis an extendedseminar forA Thousand to sufficewithresourcesat hand,since a wholetradition boldinthisattempt withwhomDeleuze has a kinship-including intellectuals of professorial had Mauss,Bergson,andTarde-has eventually Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, lecturefroma chair forum of the public benefitof the unique the additional at the Collegede France. Plateaushave not ofA Thousand the publication Theyearsfollowing the languageandproforallies"33 to the "search been sympathetic to which of JurgenHabermas's cedure of the collaborations appeal.The authority
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,

/ Deleuze's Nietzsche 191 Perry in the of poststructuralism andthe moodcaptured of the "aporias" critique Guattari leave a disconsolate for term "la 68," dismissal, pensee sloganistic these same years, of the 1980s. During addressingthe "yearsof winter" shared endeavorby art, "creative" and for a Deleuze expresses nostalgia science, and philosophy, epoch, when philosoagainst"animpoverished 34 andeternal 'on'... universal values." rights physeeks refugein reflection the of Bouvard and Pecuchet to MichelFoucault hadearlier posed images his own)work.35 Flaubert's Deleuze's (and, presumably, 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 hauntpresentproof receivedideascontinue andto compilea dictionary in the last period,however, when Nietzschean duction.Deleuze'swriting againbecomes a termfordismissal,resemblesmorecloselythe lettresde Men": drewhis "Life of Infamous cachet fromwhichFoucault glimpsesof or in ragethey "obscure men, based on the discourseswhichin misfortune exchangedwithpower."36

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