Gilles Deleuze (Routledge Critical Thinkers)

Rating:
Summary: The Best Introduction to Deleuze
Review: This is an extraodinary book: an astonishingly lucid and well-organized introduction to Deleuze's philosophical project. Most of the secondary literature on Deleuze is simply unhelpful, because it presumes that the reader already grasps Deleuze's tremendously difficult ontological project and terminology. Colebrook begins at the begining, taking the time to explain and define key terms (the virtual, singularity, intensity, affect, becoming, immanence, etc.) and offers rich illustrations of these concepts via literature and film. Indeed, it seems to me that Colebrook understands these terms and their relationships to one another much better than do most of Deleuze's interpreters, who often throw around these terms without either explaining them or seeming to understand them. Other books on Deleuze (e.g., Ronald Bogue's Deleuze and Guattari) proceed book-by-book through Deleuze's career. But Deleuze's thought does not develop chronologically. Rather, throughout his career, Deleuze deployed many of the same concepts in different contexts. Colebrook focuses on these key concepts, which should help the reader through almost any one of Deleuze's texts. There are certainly wonderful high-level explorations of Deleuze's work (e.g., Brian Massumi's User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia) and very helpful introductions to single works (e.g., Eugene Holland's Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus). But this is surely the finest, most astute, accessible and concise introduction to Deleuze's basic philosophical view.