Dark Deleuze Project Abstract

Title: Dark Deleuze: A Glossary

Author: Andrew Culp, PhD, The Ohio State University

Abstract: This paper explores the Dark Deleuze by dramatizing the difference between joyfully creating concepts and apocalyptically destroying worlds. Contextualizing this dispute in recent work, the paper draws a contrast between the use of Gilles Deleuze’s thought for a realist ontology of the object and a revolutionary materialism of destruction.

The contemporary turn to realist ontology commonly adopts Deleuze’s metaphysics of positivity (DeLanda 2002; Bryant 2011; Protevi 2013). The basis for the realist side of Deleuze is perhaps best evinced by his biography: those who knew Deleuze consistently note his firm commitment to joyful affirmation and his distaste for the ressentiment of negativity (Dosse 2010 [2007]). Beatifying this sentiment, Deleuze has been used to establish a whole canon of joy. In the canon of joy, the cosmos is a complex collection of assemblages produced through the ongoing processes of differentiation (Stengers 2011, Braidotti 2005/2006; DeLanda 2006; DeLanda 2011). The effect of this image of thought is a sense of wonder but also the joy of creating concepts for knowing how the world really exists.

A different Deleuze, a darker one, has slowly cast its shadow. Emerging from scholars concerned with the condition of the present, the darkness refashions a revolutionary Deleuze; revolutionary negativity in a world characterized by compulsory happiness, decentralized control, and overexposure (Caserio et al 2005; Galloway 2006; Lovink 2014). The refashioned Deleuze forms a counter-canon out of the perfuse negativity of his concepts and affects.* On the level of concept, negativity impregnates the many prefixes of difference, becoming, movement, and transformation: de-, a-, in-, and non-. On the level of affect, Deleuze talks of indiscernibility and concealment, the shame of being human, and monstrous power of the scream. The ultimate task of this approach is not the creation of concepts, and to the extent that it does, the Dark Deleuze creates concepts only to write apocalyptic science fiction (Deleuze 1994 [1968], xx-xxii).

It is time to move from the chapel of joy to the darkness of the crypt.

There are two parts to my Dark Deleuze counter-canon project: a philosophical justification of Dark Deleuze based on textual evidence and a consideration of recent secondary literature; a description of terms that outlines the elements of the counter-canon for use.

Neither of the two parts has been published yet. I leave it up to the editors of xxxx to determine which half of the project they would prefer.

“Dark Deleuze”: A Glossary

Those who knew Gilles Deleuze consistently note his firm commitment to joyful affirmation and his distaste for the ressentiment of negativity. Beatifying this sentiment, Deleuzians have established a whole canon of joy. But what good is joy in this world of compulsive positivity?

It is time to move from the chapel to the crypt. There is sufficient textual evidence to establish this counter-canon. And from it, we can create a glossary of the “Dark Deleuze.”

	Joyous:	Dark:
Our Task	Create Conceptions	Destroy Worlds
Substance	Techno-Science	Political Anthropology
Existence	Genesis	Transformation
Ontology	Realism	Materialism
Subjects	Assemblages	Un-becoming
Speed	Acceleration	Withdrawal

Political Organ-izing against Organ-izations/isms

The body is the body.

Alone it stands.

And in no need of organs.

Organism it never is.

Organisms are the enemies of the body.

-Antonin Artaud, ‘The Body is a Body’

a. “The BwO howls: “They’ve made me an organism! They’ve wrongfully folded me! They’ve stolen my body!'” (ATP: 159)

As an image of thought, the idea of society or the world functioning as an organism is well sedimented.  In its stupidest form, it posits resemblance between the human body and society.  Just as various organisms interact to from an organism as a functional whole, it states, society is a totality stitched together by the cooperation of social institutions.

What is remarkable about the organismic approach is its prevalence, with a history that spans from Ancient and Classical thought, through the Middle Ages, and the modern period, to today.  In contemporary sociology, for instance, a complex version of the organismic metaphor still predominates.  Rather than simple resemblance, it poses a general theory of relationality, positing that relations of interiority between parts form an organic whole.  It is only by virtue of being part of a whole that any part exists.  And if that part were to be separated from the whole, it would lose its value and function.  While avoiding brute functionalism and an inability to understand conflict or difference, it still assumes crucial categories as givens (the social, the state, social classes, and individuals to name a few).  The result?  Social institutions are granted a miraculous existence, put on Earth by the grace of God.  And the idea of directing them away from contributing to the whole or ending their existence altogether is not only at the limit of thought, but offensive.