Rhizosphere: Gilles Deleuze and the 'Minor' American Writing of William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, and William Falkner

by Zamberlin; Mary F.

• ISBN13: 9780415975353
• ISBN10: 0415975352
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book explores the significant intellectual impact the philosopher Jean Wahl had on the directions Gilles Deleuze took as a philosopher and writer of a philosophy of experimentation. The study of this influence also brings to light the significance of Deleuze's emphasis on "la pragmatique," inspired by Wahl's writings and teachings and his fascination with American pluralism and pragmatism, particularly that of William James. This book also attempts to put Deleuze's theories into action, to write in adeleuzianway about American "minor" literature and thought which Deleuze deemed "superior." This text inherently challenges and potentially provides an alternative way of reading/writing to standard critical approaches which Deleuze tells us necessarily reduce and distort a "minor" work's most lively, subtle and micro-politically efficient elements as they abort them from their "minoritarian" fields of meaning to coerce them into already existing, standard and standardizing concepts that belong toand reinforce the "Major Order's" organizational grid.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction Between Gilles Deleuze and William James: Rhizomatics and Pragmatics	1	(28)
Chapter One France's "Two Most Important Philosophers": Jean Wahl and Jean-Paul Sartre.	29	(40)
Chapter Two Disseminating the "Eaches": W.E.B. Du Bois's Souls and the Micro-Politics of Sound	69	(38)
Chapter Three Traitors versus Cheaters: Le Devenir Imperceptible in the Writings of Gertrude Stein, Jean Toomer, and William Faulkner	107	(36)
Chapter Four Conclusion	143	(20)
Notes	163	(22)
Bibliography	185	(6)
Index	191