Data Rescue!

Did you attend Deleuze’s courses during the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s? Do you have recordings or notes that you would be willing to have posted on The Deleuze Seminars website?

If so, please email us at <thedeleuzeseminars@gmail.com>, or send us a message using “Contact Us” link in the website. If materials cannot be sent electronically, we will try to cover the cost of shipping them via the regular postal service. Items can be mailed to the director of the project, Daniel W. Smith, Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, 100 N. University Ave., West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA.

Materials sent to us will be posted as soon as possible, and our hope is that they can ultimately be transcribed and translated.

 

Background

Deleuze began teaching at the University of Paris, Vincennes-St. Denis in 1969, where he taught until his retirement in 1987. Fortunately for posterity, a Japanese student named Hidenobu Suzuki recorded almost all Deleuze’s seminars between 1979 and 1987, and his cassettes became the basis for the archive established at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

However, before 1979 we have few recordings of Deleuze’s seminars, most of which were devoted to the research that resulted in the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The extant recordings from this period primarily were made by Richard Pinhas and are available at WebDeleuze.

We are thus launching this data rescue effort to retrieve as many of these recordings as possible from the 1969-1979 decade (and even before). But the clock is ticking. Students who attended Deleuze’s course in 1970 when they were 25 years old are now 75 years old, and the cassette recordings form this period may soon be lost to posterity forever. So if you have recordings or notes—or know someone who does—please let us know.

We are grateful for your assistance in helping us complete this archive of Deleuze’s seminar lectures.

 

I. List of Gilles Deleuze’s Seminars 1969-1987

Below is a list of the lectures and seminars Deleuze gave between 1969 and 1987, and the number of recordings that have been preserved for each year. Very few cassettes from 1970-1979 have been archived, and we are particularly interested in recordings from that period. The seminars marked “Complete” were primarily transcribed from Hidenobu Suzuki’s recordings, but they occasionally have gaps (when tapes were being changed) and sections that are inaudible or of poor sound quality. Alternate tapes of these lectures will help us fill in these gaps.

The currently available recordings can be accessed on the Seminar page, as well as the Gallica digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

1969-1970: Multiplicities (1 lecture; Deleuze was on convalescent leave when he presented this talk in Paris)

1970-1971: No recordings available

1971-1972: Anti-Oedipus I (9 sessions)

1972-1973: Anti-Oedipus II (5 sessions)

1973-1974: Anti-Oedipus III (3 sessions)

1974-1975: No recordings available

1975-1976: A Thousand Plateaus I (No recordings available, but videos by Marielle Burkhalter can be accessed on the seminar page)

1976-1977: A Thousand Plateaus II (2 sessions)

1977-1978: A Thousand Plateaus III: Continuous Variation (1 session)

1978: Kant and Synthesis (4 sessions)

1978-1979: A Thousand Plateaus IV (1 session)

1979-1980: The State Apparatus and War-Machines (13 sessions) [Complete]

1980: Leibniz: Philosophy and the Creation of Concepts (5 sessions) [Complete]

1980: Anti-Oedipus and Other Reflections (2 sessions) [Complete]

1980-1981: Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought (14.5 sessions) [Complete]

1981: Painting and the Question of Concepts (7.5 sessions) [Complete]

1981-1982: Cinema: The Movement-Image (21 sessions) [Complete]

1982-1983: Cinema: The Classification of Signs and Time (23 sessions) [Complete]

1983-1984: Cinema, Truth, and Time: The Falsifier (22 sessions) [Complete]

1984-1985: Cinema and Thought (26 sessions) [Complete]

1985-1986: Foucault (26 sessions) [Complete]

1986-1987: Leibniz and the Baroque (20 sessions) [Complete]

 

II. Deleuze’s Teaching Before 1969

Deleuze passed the agrégation exam in philosophy in 1948 and then taught at various lycées (high schools) until 1957: lycée Louis-Thuillier d’Amiens (1949-1952), lycée Pothier d’Orléans (1952-1955), and lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris (1955-1957). He had a position at the Sorbonne from 1957-1960, when he moved to Lyon to take up a post at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in Lyon from 1960-1964. In 1964, he moved to the University of Lyon where he remained officially until 1970. Following a serious operation in early 1969, Deleuze was on leave from Lyon during an extended convalescence which lasted until he took up his final appointment at the University of Paris-Vincennes in 1970-71.

The only lecture materials that survived from this period are the extensive notes that a student named Pierre Lefevre took during a course that Deleuze gave at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris in the 1956-57 school year entitled Qu’est-ce que fonder? (What is Grounding?), as well as Deleuze’s own lectures notes on courses he gave at the Sorbonne on Rousseau and Bergson during 1959-1960.

We would welcome any additional lecture materials from this formative period in Deleuze’s life.