Deleuze and Guattari

As we approach the end of the semester, the question concerning independent reading arises. I always recommend that my students read Ronald Bogue's Deleuze and Guattari to get clearly elaborated information on Deleuze and Guattari, and James Brusseau's Isolated Experience to see how Deleuze's philosophy can be actualized. Bogue's text was the first, if memory serves, in the English language to lay out the basic tenets of Deleuze and Guattari's thought and it remains, to my mind, the most informative and helpful. Perhaps part of the reason for its clarity is that it was written while the subject was nearly entirely undeveloped. Bogue enjoyed, consequently, a certain freedom to explain his subject in his own highly clear language. Brusseau's is the most innovative and thoughtful English-language book on Deleuze I've encountered. He demonstrates how one may strike out on a path within the realm of Deleuze's philosophical difference, and his book's final chapter on solitude is quite memorable and moving.

I completely agree with the previous reviewer about this concise and razor sharp explication of Deleuze and Guattari's work. While I'm no expert, I have read a great deal of the secondary literature out there and this one exceeds them all in clarity, rigor, and the all-important avoidance of that snobby tone so-many D & G commentator's take, as if privy to something one's readers aren't. This isn't going to be an actual review, by the way, just an added encouragement to whoever chances upon this book to get it and be quick about it. Yes, it's rather old; yes, Bogue does refer to Logique du Sens as the "Logic of Meaning" (I don't think it'd been translated when he wrote the book); yes, for all of that, it remains the one commentary that stands out (in my mind) above all the others. After this, the secondary works I would recommend are Michael Hardt's "Apprenticeship in Philosophy," Claire Colebrook's "Gilles Deleuze," Eugene Holland's invaluable explication of Anti-Oedipus (he has written many outstanding little articles as well, which you'll find in the anthologies), and finally, the more difficult but singularly rewarding "Clamor of Being" by Alain Badiou. Also, as far as the "applications" of D & G go, the little book by a guy named James Brusseau, "Isolated Experiences," is by far the best, however much one wants to disagree with his making a solipsist of Deleuze (more or less). All in all, this book will punch a hole in your mindzone without messing up your pathways. For once...a book that allows you to MAKE connections rather than preventing them with the standard proxy of "DeleuzoGuattarian." As a final note, unrelated to Bogue's book, everyone who's interested should be aware that there is a slew of Deleuze's lectures from his time at Vincennes available in translation at WebDeleuze, I believe. They range in subject from Kant, Leibniz, Spinoza, to cinema, AO and ATP, and one shouldn't miss the opportunity to see what incredible pedagogic gifts Deleuze possessed. These lectures are superb, clear, and, contrary to what most uninformed people seem to think of Deleuze's work, extremely rigorous and invigorating. Such was the man's gift...

It's amazing that the first book written in English on Deleuze and Guattari is still the best one to be found out there. I've been working deeply on the work of Deleuze and Guattari for about four years now and have read a vast amount of the secondary literature that's out there. Although I do not fully agree with all of the ways in which Bogue unfolds their work, he is very clear, highly accurate, and demonstrates a great deal of respect for the text. This is especially true of the sections on _Difference and Repetition_ and _The Logic of Sense_ that have managed to say more in twenty five pages than nearly everything that's out there. Moreover, Bogue does something tremendously important in these remarkable pages... He reads Deleuze as Deleuze without assimilating the project of DR and LoS to the later work with Guattari. Since there are important innovations between the early work and the later work, such an approach is extremely important. Bogue also demonstrates the same degree of respect when he approaches _Anti-Oedipus_ and _A Thousand Plateaus_ by discussing Guattari's important work before his fortuitous encounter with Deleuze. Although, in the end, you might not agree with all Bogue has to say, this is a must read for enthusiatic fans of Deleuze and Guattari. It's too bad other commentators have not adopted the ideal of precision Bogue adopts here... An ideal Deleuze himself praises and demands as a necessary condition for philosophy in _Bergsonism_.