Terence Blake’s ‘NOTES ON DELEUZE’S “LETTER TO A SEVERE CRITIC” (1): against Zizek’

 

by Corry Shores

 

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Terence Blake

 

NOTES ON DELEUZE’S “LETTER TO A SEVERE CRITIC” (1): against Zizek

 

In this post Blake critiques Zizek’s misreading of Deleuze’s “Letter to a Harsh Critic”, or as Blake translates it, “Letter To A Severe Critic”. Here is Blake’s useful retranslation of the famous “buggery” passages:

As it plays a crucial role in his imagination of his “refutation” of Deleuze, I would like to retranslate the famous buggery quote to bring out some neglected aspects:

“But, above all, my way of coping at that time was, I am inclined to believe, to conceive of the history of philosophy as a sort of buggery or, which amounts to the same thing, a sort of immaculate conception. I imagined myself as arriving in the back of an author and giving him a child, which would be his and which nevertheless would be monstruous. That it really be his is very important, because the author had to really say everything that I made him say. But it was also necessary that the child be monstruous, because it was necessary to go through all sorts of decenterings, slippage, breakage [NB: the slang meaning of burglary, breaking and entering, is also relevant], secret emissions that gave me a lot of pleasure” (NEGOTIATIONS, page 6, retranslated by me).

(Terence Blake)

  And there are other useful retranslations in the article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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