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Title: The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque by Gilles Deleuze, Tom Conley ISBN: 0-8166-1601-9 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: November, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Riposte
Comment: I am very unclear why an earlier reviewer would think that the translator, a professor of French at Harvard, would not be acquainted with Deleuze's work. In point of fact, it is more than likely that it is his profession to know his thought and, to put it very plainly, to know quite a bit more about French culture and philosophy. The previous reviewer gives a rendering of this translation (he never reviews the book as such) that is entirely baseless -- who does he think translates most books from the French, mathematicians? Certainly they can be consulted, and in certain cases they should be, but the notion that a Harvard professor of French is disqualified *because* he is a Harvard professor of French is downright silly. Obviously, something has gone awry with this recursive reasoning.
As to the other reviewer who asked what Deleuze was up to with Leibniz's calculus, one answer is that he is making it his own. Here is an example:
d(y)/d(x)
This is certainly not a differential equation that a mathematician would have hit upon: it is instead Deleuze's expression of a philosophical point through the use of mathematics. The equation produces a clinamen (or swerve) with no constant, only variables. It is "a world that no longer has its center" as Deleuze phrases it on page 125 of the translation. It is a structure without a center, as Derrida would call it. But whereas Derrida's notion can only be stated as a paradox (because by definition there can be no such thing as a centerless structure), Deleuze succeeds in expressing it as a simple differential equation. In other words, there is nothing but difference(s) (and, Deleuze would maintain, force). Returning to the equation, the function d(y) is dependent on d(x), which it is divided by. d(y) is dependent on a differential function d(x), that is, a continuously displaced variable. Try plotting it out on your computer, you'll find that you get a line that "swerves". Absolutely useless to mathematicians, it is however the perfect expression of Deleuze's thought. One can go so far as to take the plotted curve as a diagram or map of Deleuze's concept of thought.
Rating: 5
Summary: one of Deleuze's very best
Comment: Deleuze's sojourns into the history of philosophy, as everyone knows by now, paint a stark contrast to his "independent" works; the former being wonders of concision and clarity, each one like a diamond cutter, and the latter being drawn-out, often tedious, and in general more difficult to pentrate.
The Fold falls somewhere in between the two as he wrote it so late in his life when most assumed he was done with history. We should be thankful that he wasn't. In order to get through this book, I'll just offer my opinion for those who it may affect: when I first picked it up, I read the first two chapters and almnost threw it across the room. I didn't pick the book up again because--presumptuous me--I thought the whole book was going to be like that. WRONG! As I said, Deleuze mixes it up here, and while you may not get every chapter, there will be those, like the short, almost curt, "What is an Event?" that will, um, blow your mind.
As for this being a discourse on Leibniz. Hard to say when we've read so little Leibniz, but Deleuze is willing to stick with his "compossible" world throughout all of the book until the end, which is pretty amazing---you know, since for Deleuze's world one of the first requirements is the reality of incompossibles. But it will give you a passion for Leibniz regardless, as the last reviewer made clear.
Finally, I think Deleuze here tries to answer some of the most difficult questions that faced him after years of expanding and 'deterritorializing' D&R and LofS. If you read the latter, for instance, did you have a sort of empty feeling when he got to the "Dynamic Genesis" and afterwards, as if his tying the incorporeals to the corporeals from the point of view of bodies wasn't as solid as from the point of view of sense? Deleuze will repay you here with interest, giving one of the most fascinating and detailed accounts of a body and its connection to monads I've ever read. It may not solve all of the problems for his materialism, but then again, it might. That's a judgment call and regardless of how you judge, this book will have riches for you.
10 stars.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Key of sorts
Comment: Deleuze's book is, at least for no other reason, a worthwhile read for its sheer imagination. Secondly, it is worth reading as it shows just what is so wonderfully interesting about Leibniz. If you know Leibniz, read this book, even just a single section, and then you will understand why there do exist, in small obscure places, Leibnitians. If you are looking for a splendidly imaginative perspective, read up.
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Title: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Brian Massumi ISBN: 0816614024 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: December, 1987 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Logic of Sense by Gilles Deleuze, Constantin V. Boundas, Mark Lester, Charles Stivale, Charles Stivale ISBN: 0231059833 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Bergsonism by Gilles Deleuze, Hugh Tomlinson, Barbara Habberjam ISBN: 0942299078 Publisher: Zone Books Pub. Date: 08 November, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Cinema 1: Movement-Image by Gilles Deleuze, Hugh Tomlinson ISBN: 0816614008 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: October, 1986 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon, Daniel W. Smith, Tom Conley ISBN: 0816643415 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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