Desert
Island and Other Texts, 1953-1974
by Gilles Deleuze; David Lapoujade, Editor;
Michael Taormina, Translator
Semiotext(e), distributed by MIT Press,
Cambridge, 2003
328 pp., illus. Paper, $17.95
ISBN: 1-584-35018-0.
Reviewed by Eugene Thacker
School of Literature, Communication, and
Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology. Atlanta,
GA. 30332-0165
eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu
Desert
Islands is, at first glace, a collection
of essays, reviews, interviews, and miscellany
from the early to the middle Deleuze.
Arranged chronologically, the texts include
philosophical investigations of Hume,
Nietzsche, and Bergson, literary reflections
(on Rousseau, Jarry, and crime novels),
and engagements with contemporaries (such
as Simondon, Guattari, and Foucault).
Stopping just after the publication of
Anti-Oedipus, the collection contains
mostly un-translated material.
So then, what does one gain from a collection
of miscellany, after the dense, thick
tomes of Difference and Repetition,
and The Logic of Sense? What more
can one know about Deleuzes philosophy
by reading book reviews, interviews, and
fragments? In one sense, nothing. A reader
looking for insights into Anti-Oedipus
or other books will be disappointed here.
But, at the same time, Deleuzes
writing always attempts to de-totalize
itself, to insistently and energetically
open itself to still other concepts. From
this perspective, Desert Islands
is actually quite significant, and much
more than a collection of un-translated
texts. Desert Islands does not
contain any neat summaries of Deleuzes
major concepts; it does, however, "capture"
something of Deleuzes thought: the
fleeing, itinerant, and errant quality
of the concept. In this sense Desert
Islands does for Deleuzes work
what the Dits et Écrits
has done for Foucault, and indeed what
the whole of Blanchots work expresses.
Desert Islands is not a "themed"
collection, or an attempt to gather into
a new book, a sort of meta-book, those
utterances that have escaped. Rather,
it is an attempt to do something extremely
difficult: to let the errant quality of
thought express itself in something as
inclusive and enclosed as a book. Blanchot
and Jabès, among others, have noted
the tensions inherent in the concept of
the "book," at once a proliferation
of thought yet at the same time that which
always encloses, expands, encircles. Arguably,
Deleuzes thought operates in a similar
manner, deterritorializing at the same
time that it constructs concepts.
This, of course, makes writing a review
somewhat pointless, since one of the tasks
of the reviewer is to thematize, summarize,
or otherwise re-present the work in way
that makes obvious its inherent organization
or relevance. This ends up taking Desert
Islands as a sort of secondary text,
a text whose sole function is to be read
by the "experienced" Deleuzian
scholar or student. Instead, Desert
Islands would be better served by
a highly idiosyncratic selection of quotes:
"Geographers say there are two kinds
of islands . . . . Continental islands
are accidental, derived islands. They
are separated from a continent . . . .
Oceanic islands are originary, essential
islands. Some are formed from coral reefs
. . . others emerge from underwater eruptions
. . . . These two islands, continental
and originary, reveal a profound opposition
between ocean and island" (9). "Dreaming
of islands . . . is dreaming of pulling
away, or being already separate, far from
any continent, of being lost and aloneor
it is dreaming of starting from scratch,
recreating, beginning anew" (10).
"Hence the fundamental list of the
senses of the word planetary: global,
itinerant, errancy, planning, platitude,
gears and wheels" (75). "Who
speaks and who acts? Its always
a multiplicity, even in the person that
speaks or acts. We are all groupuscles
. . . there is only the action . . . in
the relations of relays and networks"
(207). "If we look at todays
situation, power necessarily has a global
or total vision" (210). "Imperial
unity gave birth to philosophical discourse
. . . . Philosophical discourse has always
maintained an essential relation to the
law, the institution, and the contract
. . . traversing the ages of sedentary
history from despotic formation to democracies"
(259). "Whoever reads Nietzsche without
laughing, and laughing heartily and often
and sometimes hysterically, is almost
not reading Nietzsche at all" (257).
"An island doesnt stop being
deserted simply because it is inhabited"
(10). "The simple is not divided,
it differentiates itself. This is the
essence of the simple, or the movement
of difference" (39).
If anything, the errant quality of Deleuzes
thought points to a largely under-explored
aspect of the work of Deleuze and his
collaboration with Guattari: geophilosophy.
In What is Philosophy?, they write
that "thinking takes place in the
relationship of territory and earth."
Desert Islands takes this further:
"Islands are either from before or
after humankind" (9). Thus, "the
island is also that towards which one
drifts" (10).