Deleuze and the Phantom of the Ego
(2014) International Deleuze Studies Conference — Location: Istanbul (14.July.2014)
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- It is often said that Deleuze destroyed subjectivity and repudiated the substantial self as an operating philosophical concept. However, the specificity of Deleuze with that regard is hard to grasp. Even more, it seems that he comes too late, when the ego is already crumbled, and the I-hood already disapproved, for since Nietzsche at least philosophers began to realize that the “I” is a mere grammatical habit and a logical superstition. Hence, in order to reveal the subversive aspect of deleuzian critique, we first are compelled to seize how this topic is declined in his works (with or without Guattari). Four subsets could be discovered: (1) the struggle against the “I” as a terminal idea of metaphysics must be accompanied by a struggle against the ideas of “World” and “God” (Nietzsche and philosophy), (2) the subject is passive and derived, rather than constituting and substantial (Empiricism and subjectivity), (3) subjectivity is a stratum referring to a fully functional organization of power, which pulls us back to dominant reality (A thousand plateaus), (4) the recourse to a supposedly identical and individuated cogito prevents us from having any genuine thought whatsoever (Difference and repetition). Consequently, rather than assembling those paths under rude resemblance, we distinguish diverse strategies in Deleuze, but without abandoning the assumption that there is a coherence behind the apparent multiplicity of approaches (metaphysical, political, transcendental, psychoanalytical).
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Lebedev, O. (2014). Deleuze and the Phantom of the Ego. International Deleuze Studies Conference, Istanbul. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/197722