A Thousand Trails to Work with Deleuze

Abstract

GILLES DELEUZE, LIKE MICHEL FOUCAULT, has often described theory as the tools being the philosophy creates and makes available to others in different fields of research. Despite the many new it develops, A Thousand Plateaus comprises rather unwieldy tool box, since both Deleuze and Guattari refuse to offer their readers closed system or recipe to work from. As soon as it was published in 1980, A Thousand Plateaux appeared to be just as unclassifiable as the Anti-Oedipus had been eight years earlier. It was seen by Anquetil and Deligeorges as an Unidentified Theoretical Object.' After first reading, many critics remained flabbergasted, amazed, puzzled,2 or even stricken with astonishment, stunned.3 The same critics, however, recognized that while this generates irritation, it constitutes, with the Anti-Oedipus, a philosophical body without equal in contemporary production (Delacampagne), a passport for the imagination, or fully positive book (Deligeorges). Despite its being long-awaited event, this essay was not as successful as the Anti-Oedipus. Like the Image-Movement published few years later, A Thousand Plateaus provoked multiple reactions, but few followers. While Deleuze is widely considered (at least in France) as of today's greatest philosophers,4 his work is still rarely discussed, especially in comparison with other philosophical works more accessible to the media, or more oriented towards systematic school of thought.5 As noted by Michel Contat, this apparent paradox of celebrated but rarely analyzed work makes Deleuze great philosopher about whom many talk without always having read his books.6 This problem becomes even more paradoxical if one recalls that Deleuze himself characterized A Thousand Plateaus as a of concepts that is supposed to be open to different fields of thought.7 Deleuze's philosophy is oriented toward inventing within system that must be accessible and useful not only to philosophers but to anyone

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