CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Gilles Deleuze

Organiser: Rick Dolphijn

Dolphijn, Rick (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands) INTRODUCTION: DELEUZIAN PERSPECTIVES
In his first book, written at the age of 26, Gilles Deleuze rereads the philosophy of Hume. Here, he comes up with an interesting position, which culminates in the concept of 'empiricism'. A position which enhances his point of departure that is constantly developed and reformulated within his following writings. In short, empiricism refers to a focus on relations, the immanent connections as they are made between one 'body' and another. Experiencing practices as a culmination of relations, of processes, will be the focus of this session. Sometimes they have a unifying character, sometimes they travel in every possible direction, but they are processes all the same. Deleuze captures his perspective as follows: 'Thinking with AND instead of thinking IS, instead of thinking for IS: empiricism never had another secret. Try it, it is a quite extraordinary thought, and yet it is life.'

Mikko Tuhkanen (State University of New York, U.S.A). THE ETHICS OF THE COLONIAL ENCOUNTER: GLISSANT, DELEUZE, AND CREOLIZATION
A number of critics (e.g., Aijaz, JanMohamed, and Parry) have protested against theorizing colonization as an intermingling and hybridization of the colonized and the colonizing cultures because, for them, this approach ignores the absolute violence of colonialism against “native” cultures. I propose to address this critique by reading Edouard Glissant’s theory of creolization through (some aspects of) Gilles Deleuze’s work. Applying Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza to the notion of creolization, I suggest we understand the colonial encounter as an encounter of bodies that necessarily refigures the relations of both encountering bodies. While recognizing the anti-identitarian (and anti-identity-politics) thrust in Glissant, we can through Deleuze dislodge the framework from which his work on post-coloniality seems apolitical and elitist.

Sanders, Olaf (University of Hamburg, Germany) RHYTHM, TIME AND CREATION
The concept of rhythm that Deleuze and Guattari develope in "Mille plateaus" might be one of the most fruitful terms for a better understanding of popular culture. Rhythm is, according to Deleuze/Guattari, the space between the milieus or the inbetween where novelities will emerge: the tertium datur between chaos and order. In other words and to cut a long story short, rhythm produces new practices by transcoding and reterritorializing the milieus which has to be shown through empirical research. A re-reading of "Différence et répétition" and its offshoot, "Spinoza et la problème de l¹expression", could be helpful to understand this process of permanent creation and to built categories for critical analysis. In the context of these earlier works it will become obvious that time is no line that links the past with the present and the future but a productive intermixture of three interacting spheres from where ethics can arise.

Schmiedel, Stevie (University of Nottingham, United Kingdom) RETERRITORIALISING INSANITY: SARAH KANE INBETWEEN RHIZOMATICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Gilles Deleuze intended to rock the Lacanian notion of identity and desiring-production. Sarah Kane's late work was an attempt to portray her own non-identity: her characters' genders are elusive, as are their psychological make-ups. In her original staging at the Royal Court, Crave's four characters performed the text as a poetic and rythmic event, allowing syntax and repetitions to create a symphony the way Deleuze and Guattari had suggested a book to be read. Thomas Ostermeier brought this staging to Berlin where it was strongly criticised as unintelligible and bleak. In contrast, a staging in Hamburg, mapping Kane's text onto a clearly pathological Oedipal family, was highly acclaimed. A text that could have successfully challenged binarisms had been remapped onto a 'safe' and intelligible territory: a psychoanalytic critique of society. My paper aims to discuss these stagings in the light of Deleuze's anti-psychiatric and anti-fascist ideas.

Kjetil Rødje (University of Oslo, Norway) EATING DISORDERS AS PARANOIAC DESIRE FOR DETACHMENT
This paper is based upon an empirical study on how subjectivity is performed and created in practices and discourses on eating disorders. My focus is on the representations of subjectivity in these discourses and through the multiple voices and practices that can here be found. I read these representations as a performance of, and quest for, an autonomous subject, free from restricting attachments, social as well as material. This subject is in control of itself, its body and its surroundings. My argument is that this subject as an autonomous and singular agent to be represented is an unreachable ideal. It constitutes a BwO that strongly wards of all threatening desires, a territoriality to be kept intact. This paranoiac reaction forces the subject into a self-destructive practice involving frantic reterritorializations of desire-flows. My paper will look at how Deleuze can be used to bring new and helpful understandings into the field called eating disorders.