I cannot remember posting on this listserve before and perhaps this will
be the last time. I am frankly amazed at the way this discussion has
transpired: each time someone (Andrew Murphie, Mark Crosby, Kenneth
Johnson, Timothy Murray) tries to bring the least bit of even-mindedness
to the discussion about Deleuze, it seems as if the anti-Deleuzians (for
lack of a better term) degenerate into strident name-calling. What's
"patronizing," Ted, is not Murray's altogether sane plea for
open-mindedness but, rather, a response that treats anyone who could
possibly find value in Deleuze as misled, stupid, and ultimately
inferior. If this is indeed the case, then among the dumbest we might
include Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel-prize winning chemist who credits
Deleuze with having formulated a view of multiplicity that, he insists, is
remarkably grounded in emerging sciences (see, for instance, Prigogine's
essay with Isabelle Stengers in Stenger's own _Power and Invention:
Situating Science_). The lesson to which Prigogine and Stengers constantly
return is that a distinction must be made bewteen the complicated and the
complex, the latter of which supercedes any ideal position of
knowledge (say, Laplace's or Maxwell's demon). In a very crude sense, this
distinction lies at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy and, especially, his
cinema books, for Deleuze is ultimately concerned to deterritorialize
thought from its pretense--its fantasy--of secutury, whether that security
is founded in common sense, in transcendent Truth, or in language.
	Deleuze's project is, as anyone would have to admit, exceedingly
difficult; and there are moments that are surely less successful than
others. Nevertheless, some on this listerserve would have everyone believe
that Deleuze is unreadable, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Deleuze's books on Nietzsche (which was previously mentioned), Kant,
Spinoza (_Practical Philosophy_), and Bergson are models of clarity; his
prose style--especially if read in the original French--is beautiful,
concise, and often pristine. The _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ books are,
to be sure, written in a kind of howling and poetic vein, but this is no
reason to dismiss them--rather, we might see in them an extension of
Deleuze's project to writing itself or what he calls (re Nietzsche) nomad
thought. To judge solely by these books or to say that Deleuze is patently
unreadable suggests an incredible lack of, well, hospitality. After all,
what is the point of being on a listserve such as this if you are
completely unwilling to entertain other ideas, to think even a little bit
differently? To be even more blunt, what is the point of shitting on
anyone who does think differently? Ulimately, it strikes me that by doing
so you tesify to the very strictures of thought that Deleuze, for one, was
committed to seeing past.
	As for the Sokal hoax with which, it seems, all philosophical
(continental) approaches to science are condemned, perhaps it's time to
interrogate the model or idea of science on which it's based. Sokal
suggests that academics, theoreticians, and philosophers need to be put in
their place, that they should leave the real thinking to science. Needless
to say, science has never really worked in the way it likes to pretend it
does (i.e., rationally, progressively), and more important, what does it
mean to cede that kind of intellectual space to science? In this regard,
we might understand Deleuze's relation to science--his use as well as his
resistance--as finally following Nietzsche's own ethic: "to look at
science in the perspective of art, but of art in that of life."

Gregg Flaxman
Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory
University of Pennsylvania







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