Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism

About the Author

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 29 books and, with Paul Ardoin and Laci Mattison, he is series editor of the Bloomsbury series, Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism. The serie editors were also volume editors for the initial books in that series: Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the follow-up, Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2014). Gontarski's recent books are: Beckett's “Happy Day”: A Manuscript Study (2017) and Revisioning Beckett: Samuel Beckett's Decadent Turn (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Paul Ardoin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.

Product Description

Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism explores the multi-faceted and formative impact of Gilles Deleuze on the development and our understanding of modernist thought in its philosophical, literary, and more broadly cultural manifestations.

Gilles Deleuze himself rethought philosophical history with a series of books and essays on individual philosophers such as Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, and Bergson and authors such as Proust, Kafka, Beckett and Woolf, on the one hand, and Bacon, Messiaen, and Pollock, among others, in other arts. This volume acknowledges Deleuze's profound impact on a century of art and thought and the origin of that impact in his own understanding of modernism.

Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism begins by "conceptualizing" Deleuze by offering close readings of some of his most important works. The contributors offer new readings that illuminate the context of Deleuze's work, either by reading one of Deleuze's texts against or in the context of his entire body of work or by challenging Deleuze's readings of other philosophers. A central section on Deleuze and his aesthetics maps the relationships between Deleuze's thought and modernist literature. The volume's final section features an extended glossary of Deleuze's key terms, with each definition having its own expert contributor.

Review

"Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism is a significant moment in the ongoing exploration of the relationship between Deleuze and modernism, presenting the concept of modernism through his thought. Although each essay focuses on a different aspect of Deleuze's philosophy and of modernist tendencies, there are overlappings and recurring themes in them, and together they offer a a coherent, yet diverse image for the reader, a thorough and compelling critical engagement with Deleuze's modernism." – Hungary Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies

"If you want to learn from some of the deepest and most original work on Deleuze, Guattari and literature available today, this is the book for you. If you are currently doing advanced research on Deleuze, Guattari and literature, this collection will be a valuable resource for studies and positions in relation to which your thesis should be critically situated... This collection is a long and rewarding set of essays on the different ways in which modernist works and the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari can add to the resources for thinking through a condition that has now become post-human. It is not possible to do justice to each essay or to the excellent and very helpful glossary entries at the end of the book." – Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"I love using Deleuze, even when I do not follow him systematically. I admire the infinite productivity of his concepts, the generosity of his culture and the intelligence of his readings, all of which are magnified by this compendium with its sharp definitions, astute contextualizations and a comprehensive glossary. It has already become invaluable for me. I can recommend it to readers interested in the interfaces between literature, philosophy, art and politics. The full power of Deleuze's mind