Deleuze's Literary Clinic: Criticism and the Politics of Symptoms

200 Pages·2012·14.22 MB·English

by  Aidan Tynan

Deleuze' s Literary Clinic
Plateaus -New Directions in Deleuze Studies
'It's not a matter of bringing aU sorts of things together under a single
concept but rather of relating each concept to variables that explain its
mutations.'
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations
Series Editors
lan Buchanan, Cardiff University
Claire Cole brook, Penn State University
Editorial Advisory Board
Keith Ansell Pearson
Ronald Bogue
Constantin V. Boundas
Rosi Braidotti
Eugene Holland
Gregg Lambert
Dorothea Olkowski
Paul Patton
Daniel Smith
James Williams
Titles available in the series
Dorothea Olkowski, The Universal (In the Realm of the Sensible):
Beyond Continental Philosophy
Christian Kerslake, I1nmanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy:
From Kant to Deleuze
Jean-Clet Martin, Variations: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, translated
by Constantin V. Boundas and Susan Dyrkton
Simone Bignall, Postcolonial Agency: Critique and Constructivism
Miguel de Beistegui, Immanence: Deleuze and Philosophy
Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature
Ronald Bogue, Deleuzian Fabulation and the Scars of His tory
Sean Bowden, The Priority of Events: Deleuze's Logic of Sense
Craig Lundy, History and Becoming: Deleuze's Philosophy of Creativity
Aidan Tynan, Deleuze's Literary Clinic: Criticisn1 and the Politics of
Sympton1S
Visit the Plateaus website at www.euppublishing.com/series/plat
DELEUZE'S LITERARY CLINIC
Criticism and the Politics of Symptoms
Aidan Tynan
EDINBURGH
University Press
.For Shamima
© Aidan Tynan, 2012
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
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printed and bound in Great Britain by
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ISBN 978 0 7486 50576 (epub)
ISBN 9780748650583 (Amazon ebook)
The right of Aidan Tynan
to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgments
VI
Abbreviations
VU
Introduction: From Symptomatology to Schizoanalysis 1
1 A Case of Thought 25
2 The Paradox of the Body and the Genesis of Form and
Conœm 55
3 Symptoms, Repetition and the Productive Death Instinct 88
4 The Identity of the Critical and the Clinical 119
5 The People to Come 153
Conclusion 173
Bibliography 179
Index 189
Acknowledgements
Thanks are first and foremost due to Ian Buchanan, without
who se undying support and encouragement this book might never
have appeared. 1 would also like to express n1y gratitude to laInes
Williams and Laurent Milesi for their generosity in reading and com
menting on this work. The intellectual comradeship of Tirn Matts,
Tom Harman and Chris Mueller kept me going and kept me sane
through much of the writing process; 1 am in debt. Above aH,
1 wish to thank Iny family, especially my parents Ted and Carmel.
VI
Abbreviations
Works by Gilles Deleuze
B Deleuze, Gilles (1991), Bergsonism, trans. ffugh Tomlinson
and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Zone.
C2 Deleuze, Gilles (2005), Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans.
Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, London: Continuum.
CC Deleuze, Gilles (1997), Essays Critical and Clinical, trans.
DanielW. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
CYL Deleuze, Gilles (1980), 'Cours Vincennes: Leibniz, 15/04/1980',
http://www.webdeleuze.com/phpltexte.php?cle=50&groupe
=Leibniz&langue=2, last accessed: 14/11/2010.
DI Deleuze, Gilles (2004), Desert Islands and Other Texts,
1953-1974, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Mike Taormina,
New York: Semiotext(e).
DR Deleuze, Gilles (1994), Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul
Patton, London: Athlone.
EP Deleuze, Gilles (1992), Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza,
trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Zone.
FB Deleuze, Gilles (2005), Francis Bacon: The Logic ofS ensation,
trans. Daniel W. Smith, London: Continuum.
FLB Deleuze, Gilles (2006), The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque,
trans. Tom Conley, London: Continuum.
Kep Deleuze, Gilles (1984), Kant's Critical Philosophy: The
Doctrine of the Faculties, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam, London: Athlone.
LS Deleuze, Gilles (2004), The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark
Lester and Charles Stivale, London: Continuum.
M Deleuze, Gilles (1991), Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty,
trans. Jean McNeil, New York: Zone.
N Deleuze, Gilles (1995), Negotiations 1972-1990, trans.
Martin Joughin, New York: Colurubia University Press.
VIl
DELEUZE'S LITERARY CLINIC
NP Deleuze, Gilles (1983), Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans.
Hugh Tomlinson, London: Continuum.
OLM Deleuze, Gilles (1997), 'One Less Manifesto', trans. Eliane
dal Molin and Timothy Murray, in Murray (ed.), Mimesis,
.Masochism, and .Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in
Contemporary French Thought, Ann Arbor: University of
.M.ichigan Press, pp. 239-58.
PI Deleuze, Gilles (2001), Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life,
trans. Anne Boyman, New York: Zone.
PS Deleuze, Gilles (2000), Proust and Signs: The Complete
Tex t, trans. Richard Howard, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
SM Deleuze, Gilles (2004), 'From Sacher-Masoch to Masochism',
trans. Christian Kerslake, Angelaki, 9:1, pp. 125-33.
TRM Deleuze, Gilles (2006), Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and
Interviews 1975-1995, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Ames
Hodges and Mike Taormina, New York: Semiotext(e).
Works by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
AO Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (2004) [new edition], Anti
Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. R. Hurley, M.
Seem and H. R. Lane, London: Continuum.
ATP Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (2004) [new edition], A
Thousand Plateaus: Capitalisnt and Schizophrenia, trans.
Brian Massumi, London: Continuum.
K Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1986), Kafka: Toward a
Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan, Minneapolis: University
of .Minnesota Press.
WP Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1994), What Is
Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchill and Hugh Tomlinson,
London: Verso.
Works by Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet
D Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet (2002) [new edition],
Dialogues II, trans.Hugh Tomlinson and Barbaralfabberjam,
London: Continuum.
Vlll
Introduction: From Symptomatology to
Schizoanalysis
This book centres on Deleuze's understanding of literature as 'an
enterprise of health' and of literary criticism's links to aspects of
pathology and clinical practice, especially as these latter come under
scrutiny in Deleuze and Guattari's 'schizoanalysis' project (CC 3). The
relation between literature and health is argued for most explicitly by
Deleuze in his last published book, Essays Critical and Clinical. Ir is
here that he lays out the principal hypothesis of a clinical criticism:
certain authors have a weak health, but literature, by gaining a per
spective on sickness, is capable of transforming this weakness into a
creative power. Literary activity is capable of charting a passage from
weakness ta strength, and this is a living, vital process as much as an
aesthetic or semiotic one, which is why Deleuze tides his preface to
Essays Critical and Clinical 'Literature and Life'. 'Life', here, is to be
distinguished sharply from the pers on al domain of biographical and
psychological contents as weIl as from organic biology, being what
Deleuze defines in terms of the inorganic, the socio-political and the
world-historical. He proposes that if great authors often suffer sick
nesses this is not because they have shut themselves off from life, or
chao se literature as an escape from life, but because, on the contrary,
they have borne witness to and experienced a form of life in excess
of their own personhood and biological and psychological integrity.
The author may document his or her own sickness but what is thus
diagnosed is far less a personal affair than something with imper
sonal, even inhuman, dimensions.
While Essays Critical and C/inical argues directly for the possibil
ity, even necessity, of a clinical criticism in this sense, it raises many
more questions than it answers, and we rnay ev en say that it does no
more than pose, in the most tantalising of ways, the problem of the
relation between literary creativity and health. This is by no means
because Deleuze came ta the notion late in his life - on the contrary,
his early book on Nietzsche emphasises the latter's idea that both
1
DELEUZE'S LITERARY CLINIC
artists and philosophers operate in their separate ways as physicians
of civilisation, diagnosing the values of which cultural products and
institutions are the symptoms. Philosophers and artists are united
by a shared interest in 'symptomatology', the practice of arranging
symptoms creatively in order to diagnose new diseases. In a work
published five years after the Nietzsche book, Deleuze apphes this
idea directly to the novels and stories of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,
whose name was famously introduced into medical terminology when
Krafft-Ebing categorised masochism as a sexual perversion. Deleuze
is critical of the ways in whichmasochism has been classified in terms
of an inversion of sadisn1, and caUs the concept of sadolnasochism,
as it appears in the psychoanalytic literature from Freud to Theodor
Reik, a 'crude syndrome' (M 40). I-Ie seeks instead to account for
masochism's symptomatological specificity through an analysis of
Masoch's literary techniques, highlighting the importance of the link
between fonnal features of an author's style and the symptoms
of illness. specificity of an author's style is to be understood
in the same way proper nan1e of a becomes attached
to certain disorders, as in Parkinson's disease, Crohn's disease and
so on. The symptomatologist, in the literary sense, does not simply
suffer his or her illness but gains a rigorous perspective on it through
the formaI innovations of his or her writing, and thus manages to be
both doctor and patient at once. This identity of doctor and patient,
health and illness, strength and weakness, forms the central intuition
of Deleuze's critical and clinical project.
What can be called the 'literary clinic' is, 1 argue, present from
Deleuze's earliest works and persists throughout his career, although,
for various reasons which we shall touch upon in a moment, it is
often discovered in incomplete forms, half submerged in other con
cerns. Gregg Lambert describes the Iiterary clinic in terms of three
aspects:
First, certain writers have invented concrete semiotic practices that may
prove more effective than psychoanalytic discourse in diagnosing the con
stellation of mute forces that both accompany life and threaten it from
within. Second, as a result of this diagnostic and critical function, certain
literary works can be understood to produce a kind of 'symptomatology'
that may prove to be more effective than political or ideological critique
in discerning the signs that correspond to the new arrangements of 'lan
guage, labour, and life' to employ Foucault's abbreviated formula for the
grand institutions of instinct and habit ... Finally, third, certain modern
writers can offer us a manner of diagramrning the potential forms of
2