Gilles Deleuze and the Fabulation of Philosophy

Although much has been written about Deleuzes engagement with the arts, Gilles Deleuze and the Fabulation of Philosophy concerns the art of his philosophy. Gregory Flaxman suggests that Deleuzes notorious rejection of representation gives rise to a singular taskto create new concepts and invent new means of philosophical expression. Tracing this task throughout Deleuzes vast oeuvre, Flaxman argues that Deleuzes ambition to think and write otherwise constitutes the fabulation of philosophy itself. For Flaxman, Deleuzes philosophy is organized around the notion of the friend (philos). This book dramatizes the practice of friendship in Deleuzes intimate affairs with philosophersincluding Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, and Foucaultand close encounters with a range of writers, including Homer, More, Kafka, Woolf, and Borges. Flaxman traces Deleuzes relationship with Nietzsche, the friend from whom he learned to write in his own name, to explain how apprenticeship becomes the initial condition of Deleuzes philosophical method. Detailing the transformation of Nietzsches genealogy into geophilosophy, Flaxman goes on to show how Deleuzes philosophy of the earth precipitates his return to ancient Greece and induces his resolution to overturn Platonism. In this spirit, the book demonstrates Deleuzes evocation of the powers of the false by examining how, in his battle against representation, he makes fiction the basis for a minor philosophy. This first volume draws to a close with a timely elaboration of Deleuzes avowed, if enigmatic, style as politics in an age when capitalism and communication challenge the claims of philosophy as never before. A stunning and original contribution, Flaxmans book restores the question of aesthetics to Deleuzes thinking and writing. Gilles Deleuze and the Fabulation of Philosophy not only revitalizes our sense of the philosopher but revises the sense of his philosophy, provoking critical problems and novel possibilities with which readers will wrestle for years to come.