Gilles Deleuze
RIS ID
116172
Abstract
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was a French philosopher who was born in Paris and, following a long, incapacitating illness, took his own life in the same city. Deleuze's oeuvre is difficult to classify. He described his work as philosophy, 'nothing but philosophy', even when it looked like something else - anthropology, art history, social theory, politics, film theory and so on. As this brief litany suggests, his work ranges far beyond the usual concerns of the discipline. His work is read equally widely - indeed, it tends to be most influential outside philosophy. He has devoted readers in art, architecture, anthropology, cultural studies, film studies, gender studies, politics and sociology. Deleuze introduced both a new way of writing philosophy and a new way of thinking about philosophy that contributed in profound ways to the construction of the new discursive form known today simply as theory.1 His friend Michel Foucault, a towering intellectual figure in his own right, recognised the significance of Deleuze's contribution to twentieth-century thought very early and in 1969 mischievously went so far as to suggest the century would be named after him.2
Publication Details
Buchanan, I. M. (2017). Gilles Deleuze. In B. Evans & T. Carver (Eds.), Histories of Violence : Post-war Critical Thought (pp. 107-123). London: Zed Books.