A Thousand Plateaus I, RAI-3 Recordings, Lecture 8, 24 February 1976

<p><em>The Deleuze Seminars</em> is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.</p>

<p>Following the publication of <em>Anti-Oedipus</em> in 1972, Deleuze continues to develop the proliferation of concepts that his collaboration with Guattari had yielded. Throughout the 1970s, Deleuze and Guattari’s interest in expanding these concepts continues, eventually producing the sequel, <em>A Thousand Plateaus</em>.</p>

<p>The 1975-1976 seminar sessions were filmed by one of his students, Marielle Burkhalter, as part of her masters project, “Filming Philosophy as it Happens.” Enrico Ghezzi acquired the videos for broadcast on the RAI-3 cinema program “Fuori Orario,” after inviting Burkhalter to screen them at a festival he co-curated. Marielle Burkhalter, along with Stavroula Bellos, would eventually become the director of the L’Association Siècle Deleuzien and oversaw the French transcriptions of Deleuze’s seminars at the Paris 8 “Voix de Gilles Deleuze” website (http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/).</p>

<p>In this group of lectures, Deleuze offers the multi-faceted focus of the semester’s work, mainly to distinguish forms of faciality, encompassing black-holes/white-walls, faces and landscapes, facial power-relations, redundancy, molecular multiplicity, the rhizome, the refrain, and courtly love. As none of the films was marked chronologically, the order of the successive seminars was determined based on the content provided in the videos, notably Deleuze’s course organization that followed successive chapters from <em>A Thousand Plateaus. </em>Besides the content as one guidepost as well as the physical disposition of classroom details, the chronologically first video was the one titled “Deleuze su molteplicità molare e molteplicità molecolare” followed by the two successive four-hour segments, titled “Il Senso in meno”. Furthermore, despite no precise dates provided, a sequence of dates was extrapolated before and after session 7 based on comments by an Iranian student announcing during that session that a demonstration would occur later that day, 3 February 1976.</p>

<p>In session 8, 24 February 1976 (date approximate), the film corresponds to the second segment of the “Il Senso in Meno” II recording (the seventh segment of both parts), on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Po2tIgeD4, corresponding to time stamp 29:17 to the end of the long second segment at 2:23:06. </p>

<p>In session 8, 24 February 1976,Deleuze proposes that they address the close-up, the purpose being to apply to it the “rhizome method” more systematically. Regarding close-ups of things other than the face, Deleuze asserts (with reference to Eisenstein on D.W. Griffith’s cinema) that such close-ups occur provided that the thing in question is caught up in a process of facialization. Deleuze then undertakes to define the close-up by considering different cinematographic means, and with various references, Deleuze joins the two functions of the close-up to two types of faciality, the despotic face and the passional face, but also notes mixed uses of types of close-ups. A recording interruption occurs followed by a 37-minute debate among the participants regarding the unacceptably crowded conditions in the classroom. Deleuze attempts to bring discussion to a close by mediating between the opposing sides, but finally, with no agreement reached, the session continues for another 30 minutes. Deleuze considers two forms of delirium, specifically paranoid delusions (or delusions of interpretation) and passional delusions (or grievance delusions), distinctions that he develops with numerous references, modern, classical and biblical, and he concludes the session by proposing that they continue to examine the two systems.</p>

<p>The French transcription and subsequent English translation were developed for the Deleuze Seminars directly from the RAI-3 recording, located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emORIIs8esw&t=10347s. This dataset includes two files: a revised French transcription and new English translation in odt format.</p>

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<p>Les Séminaires de Deleuze sont une collection d'enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents complémentaires des conférences que le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze a donné lors de sa carrière à l'Université de Paris 8.</p>

<p>Dans la séance 8, le 24 février 1976, Deleuze propose d’aborder le gros plan, le but étant d’y appliquer plus systématiquement la « méthode du rhizome ». Concernant les gros plans sur d’autres choses que le visage, Deleuze affirme (en référence à Eisenstein sur le cinéma de D.W. Griffith) que de tels gros plans se produisent à condition que la chose en question soit prise dans un processus de visagéfication. Deleuze entreprend ensuite de définir le gros plan en considérant différents moyens cinématographiques, et à l’aide de diverses références, Deleuze associe les deux fonctions du gros plan à deux types de visagéïté, le visage despotique et le visage passionnel, mais relève aussi des usages mixtes de types de gros plans. Une interruption de l’enregistrement survient suivie d’un débat de 37 minutes entre les participants à propos des conditions inacceptables de manque d’espace dans la salle de classe. Deleuze tente de resoudre la discussion en faisant la médiation entre les parties adverses, mais finalement, aucun accord n’étant trouvé, la séance se poursuit pendant encore 30 minutes. Deleuze considère deux formes de délire, à savoir les délires paranoïaques (ou délires d'interprétation) et les délires passionnels (ou délires de grief), distinctions qu'il développe à l'aide de nombreuses références, modernes, classiques et bibliques, et il conclut la séance en proposant de continuer à examiner les deux systèmes.</p>