By John Corbett
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Over the course of his 70 years, Gilles Deleuze created a unique body of work, much of it written in conjunction with collaborators like Claire Parnet or Felix Guattari. Such tandem tracts as Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus (both of which bear the suggestive subtitle “Capitalism and Schizophrenia”) were conceived and written as duets, ensemble works that forced the individual thinkers to surrender themselves to the process of writing together. On his own, Deleuze wrote some of the most deeply provocative reevaluations of previous philosophers–Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson. But just as radical poststructuralist Michel Foucault insisted that all history should be a history of the present, so were Deleuze’s readings of canonical philosophers always grounded in contemporary ideas and practices, making old ideas relevant to the present. “A theory is exactly like a box of tools,” Deleuze once insisted. “It must be useful. It must function. And not for itself….It is strange that it was Proust, an author thought to be a pure intellectual, who said it so clearly: treat my book as a pair of glasses directed to the outside; if they don’t suit you, find another pair; I leave it to you to find your own instrument.”
The idea is at once high theory and grassroots activism. When illustrating their rhizomatic concept, Deleuze and Guattari use references to popular culture, including the Pink Panther (everything he touches turns pink!), rocker Patti Smith, and the lyrics to the song “Old Man River.” Deleuze’s is a creative philosophy: simultaneously avant-garde and, in the sense that it resists the elitism and exclusivity of academic philosophy, potentially open to anyone. In the boldest endorsement of his career, Foucault–not known for gratuitous PR–proclaimed: “Perhaps one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian.”
Like Deleuze’s writings, Stevens’s music is the product of a populist approach that doesn’t pander. Whether making unconventional music or writing poetic oppositions to ontology, the first order of business for Stevens and Deleuze was not making sure people liked them, for “being liked” is based on “being heard” or “being seen.” The work would have to physically reach the reader, listener, or viewer–thus, a whole network of distribution, controlled or influenced by various interested parties, must be in place–and it must reach people with time, energy, and impetus to give the challenging material the attention it demands. To be taken seriously is a rare commodity–some say a luxury–in our drive-through era.
