On Deleuze’s Thought Of Life-literature

Gilles Deleuze’s(1925-1995)research is rich and varied,covering philosophy,art,natural science,and many other fields.Among the many artistic disciplines,Deleuze was particularly interested in literature,but his work was fragmented and disorganized.However,the concept of“life” can be likened to an implicit thread that runs through Deleuze’s thought.This thesis tries to sort out and analyze Deleuze’s literary ideas based on the concept of life,and to comment on his complex literary thoughts.The first chapter traces the theoretical origin of Deleuze’s concept of life and clarifies the unique connotation of it.There are three main theoretical sources for the formation of Deleuze’s concept of life: Bergson’s theory of duration and vital impulses,Nietzsche’s theory of will to power and eternal recurrence,Spinoza’s theory of immanence and affect.Based on an inherent affinity,the three unique and creative theoretical sources intersect here and finally form Deleuze’s unique view of life with the basic connotation of transcendental immanent life,non-subjective intensity life and super-moral ethical life.Chapter 2 analyzes Deleuze’s general understanding of literature based on his unique view of life.Generally speaking,Deleuze’s view of literature is a “for life” literary view.According to Deleuze,the key of literature is the block of sensations,which consists of perceptions and feelings that are distinct from perceptions and emotions.The latter are expressed as the negation of stereotypes and memories.Deleuze give this literature a highly political and revolutionary purpose: calling on the people of the future and creating a whole new life.And the basis behind this is Deleuze’s unique pragmatic view of language.Chapter 3 analyzes Deleuze’s unique understanding of literature in terms of the relationship between life and the writer.Behind the idea that “literature is an enterprise of health” is Deleuze’s unique understanding of the relationship between literature and life and the related diseases and health.Deleuze argues that illness as a life event creates a line of escape to higher health,to pure life,thus untying the writer from the forced bond with illness.On this basis,this chapter further dissects Deleuze’s comparison of the writer to the physician in terms of both the symptomatologist of civilization and the healing physician of the age,whereby literature becomes an enterprise concerned with health.Chapter 4 analyzes Deleuze’s understanding of writing in terms of the relationship between life and literary creation.Deleuze’s view of literary creation takes life as the highest creative principle,and the core of it is to see writing as a generative event.This chapter summarizes Deleuze’s articulation of specific ways of literary creation into the generative-other of the writer and the generative-other of language,the former with generative-animal,generative-woman and generative-imperceptible as the main forms of expression,and the latter mainly manifested in two generative paths: becoming-foreign language and becoming-music.Chapter 5 analyzes Deleuze’s understanding of criticism in terms of the relationship between life and literary criticism.Deleuze’s view of literary criticism continues to take life as the highest critical principle and the growth or diminution of the intensity of life as the only measure of literary value.This chapter summarizes this view of literary criticism as schizoanalytic criticism,and specifically develops the analysis through three specific types of criticism: ethical criticism of immanence,symptomatic criticism,and literary machine criticism of anti-meaning interpretation.Chapter 6 summarizes the values and limitations of Deleuze’s thought of life-literature.Deleuze’s literary thought with life as the highest principle has a great significance for the literary creation and criticism in the post-epidemic era in China,and provides an important theoretical guidance for the interdisciplinary study of contemporary literary theory in the context of the new liberal arts.However,Deleuze’s literary thought as a whole has a tendency to romanticize,and his avoidance of the reader acceptance makes literature in danger of slipping into meaningless ravings and pathological delirium,all of which we need to be cautious about when accepting Deleuze’s thought.