Product Description A playful, personal, and profound interview with Gilles Deleuze, covering topics from “Animal” to “Zigzag.”Although Gilles Deleuze never wanted a film to be made about him, he agreed to Claire Parnet's proposal to film a series of conversations in which each letter of the alphabet would evoke a word: From A (as in Animal) to Z (as in Zigzag). These DVDs, elegantly transtlated and subtitled in English, make these conversations available for English-speaking audiences? for the first time.In dialogue with Parnet (a journalist and former student of Deleuze), the philosopher exhibited the modest and thrilling transparency that his seminal works (such as Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus) reveal. The sessions were taped when Deleuze was already terminally ill; he and Parnet agreed that the film would not be shown publicly until after his death. The awareness of mortality floats through the dialogues, making them not just intellectually stimulating but also emotionally engaging. Because Parnet knew Deleuze so well, she was able to draw him out―as no one else had―to what might be the 1001st plateau: a place of brilliance, rigor, and charm.In “A as in Animal,” for example, Deleuze vents his hatred of pets: “A bark,” he declares, “really seems to me the stupidest cry.” Instead, he praises the tick: “... in a nature teeming with life, [the tick] extracts three things”: light, smell, and touch. This, he claims, in a sense is philosophy. “And that is your life's dream?” Parnet wryly asks. “That's what constitutes a world,” he replies. For Deleuze, doing philosophy meant not just creating concepts but living a life in philosophy. Gilles Deleuze from A to Z presents the mind of a great philosopher at work. Review ...[A] rare and interesting look at the man and his letters.―Roy Christopher BlogGilles Deleuze from A to Z... is a riveting, self-penned obituary of a sickly and self-reflexive philosopher, whose ruminations on bodies, space, art and knowledge constitute both an encyclopedia and an atlas.―Erik Morse, Frieze…[A] dense and illuminating filmed interview structured as an alphabet primer (A as in 'Animal,' B as in 'Boire,' C as in 'Culture'...)… it's not a standard interview but a final testimony, with an interlocutor who serves expertly as muse.―Rachel Kushner, BOMBGilles Deleuze (1925-95) is without question one of the most important philosophers writing in French in the second half of the twentieth century…A unique and important document that will engage anyone interested in Deleuze's thought.―Choice P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Manufacturer Contact Information The MIT Press; [email protected] See more
B**X
Inimitable Deleuze
I purchased this DVD in France, watched it in French, and was so pleased to be able to share an English sub-titled version with friends. I am a real "groupie" of this unclassifiable French philosopher, and my husband and I made it a habit a couple of summers ago of watching one "letter" i.e. one theme every evening before dinner. Food for thought but no particular prior knowledge required to enjoy it. One worries only about the state of the perpetually smoking interviewer's lungs!
P**E
A must
I was so happy to eventually get the whole Thing, after watching samples on Youtube, on and on. You don't need to be in philosophy to enjoy Deleuze talking from A to Z about his practise. What you need is to be alive, and to think about this simple ... concept.
R**E
I cant stop watching this like I cant stop reading
I cant stop watching this like I cant stop reading Proust
D**N
Deleuze "off the air"
This film is truly wonderful in that it shows Gilles Deleuze without all of the fame, glory, and metaphorical "red carpet" that gets rolled out for him as a "famous leftist thinker" (whatever that means). He comes across as an eccentric, decrepit sage, that is to say, one who has been to many places, and affirmed most of them. The special thing about this video series is that he seems approachable, and perhaps even vulnerable throughout its duration.Deleuze's academic writings are well-known for their impenetrability. Even some of the so-called "brightest bulbs on the tree" have been mystified and puzzled by his style and concepts. Reading his writings gives one the impression that one has landed somewhere one does not belong; everything seems foreign and out-of-place. It is not unusual for readers of Deleuze to give up their studies of his works out of feelings of inadequacy.While this (giving up in the face of Deleuze's obscurity) is certainly an understandable response, it should always be remembered that Deleuze himself had a very complex and antagonistic relationship with academics. Although his writings are without a doubt "academic", the only things that make a professor more likely to read his work than a homeless man or a prostitute are:1) likelihood of exposure (typically Deleuze is only discussed in academic contexts)2) intellectual narcissism: the professor or graduate student is likely to have an insane amount of faith in their intellectual abilities, and is thus more than likely to have come under the impression that "nothing is too complex" to comprehend.This video series, however, has something for everybody, and is not at all intimidating to watch, except perhaps in the case of viewers who are easily bored by low levels of visual stimulation. The title, which invokes the alphabet is expressive of this fact. This is a notoriously obscure and complex thinker who has chosen to make a video series based on the first thing we all learn in school: THE ALPHABET. Need I say more? "From A to Z" is splendidly, gloriously mundane, and perhaps, dare I say, a little bit heartwarming?
G**L
Pregunta
Pregunta... el video tiene traduccion Al español?
R**A
YOU MUST TO HAVE THIS INTERVIEW!
The abecedaire (from A to Z) by Gilles Deleuze (interviewed by Claire Parnet) is very important for the thinking during the second half of the twentieth century. This set of discs is a great example of Deleuze because here he clearly explains the meaning of his experience of thinker in the years in counterculture (after May '68). Deleuze never abandoned his point of view : it is the value for everybody that wish to know from a thinker that was in leading position in post '68 the feeling of such an important era. He underlines the fact that bourgeoisie does not forget the fear of that time of May 68.About the heritage of May 68 : for example the item “desire” in the interview is explained in very frankly manner, it is named “constructivism” that is the opposite of the vulgar meaning of desire as spontaneity politics or crazy behavior. In the same time Gilles Deleuze interviewed by a great Claire Parnet tell us that he was among the crazies with the purpose to help this people preventing the disaster of hospitalization in a psychiatric facility. This concept is worth to link to the video tapes filmed during the lessons of philosophy in Vincennes in the half of 70s. (And I suggest to evaluate the great experimentalism of Deleuze in the field of multimedia.) The DVDs of abecedaire are almost of ten years later (1988) but contains the same feeling of that years when people was more hopeful toward the ideo of changing the world.It is a posthumous interview (made seven years before the death of the philosopher), this underlines the fact that it seems the "last" word of Deleuze. And in a point of the interview he tell that he (and Guattari) was a sort of Bouvard et Pecuchet encyclopedia (said that smiling) thereby establishing the actuality of time. He was (in my opinion) seeing the coming 1989.Some opinions are a bit controversial e.g. the statement about Umberto Eco or Wittgenstein. But it is out of doubt that Deleuze sometime exaggerates his thought. This freewheeling interview (greatly subtitled in English) supports the idea that "revolution" is always a failure hence the "revolutionary" must view his future with the lens of tragedy. At last the philosopher declares himself as a witness of the experience of thinking composed with ideas that can stand alone. Perfectly matches the european philosophical thought. Deleuze does not wish represent himself like a politician therefore this interview is a great evidence of his sincerity.
D**R
Guía indispensable
Una guía indispensable para el pensamiento de uno de los filósofos más importantes del siglo XX, capital para la comprensión del siglo XXI.
K**R
but a uniquely fascinating DVD nonetheless which captures a side of the man perhaps unobtainable elsewhere and which I still tho
Maybe not exactly quintessential Gilles, but a uniquely fascinating DVD nonetheless which captures a side of the man perhaps unobtainable elsewhere and which I still thoroughly recommend.
R**Z
Five Stars
Great!!
