Gilles Deleuze

Abstract

Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis from 1969 to 1987. He published extensively on the history of philosophy and on the concepts of the arts. His books include Empiricism and Subjectivity (1953; English trans. 1991), Proust and Signs (1964; English trans. 2000), Bergsonism (1966; English trans. 1988), Diff erence and Repetition (1968; English trans. 1994), Spinoza and the Problem of Expression (1968; English trans. 1988), Francis Bacon (1981; English trans. 2003), Cinema 1 (1983; English trans. 1986), Cinema 2 (1985; English trans. 1989); Foucault (1986; English trans. 1988) and The Fold (1988; English trans. 1993). In collaboration with the political psychoanalyst Félix Guattari he co- authored a number of works, including Anti- Oedipus (1972; English trans. 1977), Kafka (1975; English trans. 1986), A Thousand Plateaus (1980; English trans. 1987) and What is Philosophy? (1991; English trans. 1994). Of all the film-philosophies of the twentieth century, it is perhaps Deleuze's that is most of the cinema. By that I mean that it attempts to belong to cinema rather than simply be about it. It shows us film thinking for itself. The magnanimity Deleuze shows to film's conceptual power is seen most clearly at the very end of his two-volume work on film (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image) when he writes that “cinema's concepts are not given in cinema. And yet they are cinema's concepts, not theories about cinema.”