Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense

Description

This book is an original exploration of Deleuze's dynamic philosophies of space, time and language, bringing Deleuze and futurism together for the first time. Helen Palmer investigates both the potential for creative novelty and the pitfalls of formalism within both futurist and Deleuzian linguistic practices. Through creative and rigorous analyses of Russian and Italian futurist manifestos, the 'futurist' aspects of Deleuze's language and thought are drawn out. The genre of the futurist manifesto is a literary and linguistic model which can be applied to Deleuze's work, not only at times when he writes explicitly in the style of a manifesto but also in his earlier writings such as Difference and Repetition (1968) and The Logic of Sense (1969). The way in which avant-garde manifestos often attempt to perform and demand their aims simultaneously, and the problems which arise due to this, is an operation which can be perceived in Deleuze's writing. With a particular focus on Russian zaum, the book negotiates the philosophy behind futurist 'nonsense' language and how Deleuze propounds analogous goals in The Logic of Sense. This book critically engages with Deleuze's poetics, ultimately suggesting that multiple linguistic models operate synecdochically within his philosophy.

Helen Palmer is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

The book's constructive project is worthy of attention. Kaspar uses the many objections to intuitionism to pare the theory down to its essentials; then, he develops a framework that promises to solve the explanatory and epistemological puzzles that the view faces. ... An engaging and accessible work. -- Robert William Fischer, Texas State University, USA * Philosophy in Review * In this exceptionally rewarding study of Deleuze and futurism, Helen Palmer enacts new possibilities for rigorous scholarship, where precise formal analysis and powerful conceptual innovation combine to give us the deepest practical explanation of Deleuze's radical philosophy of language, while pointing to the continued importance of futurism as template for avant-garde movements. * James Williams, University of Dundee, UK * This important new study sheds more light on a movement that has profoundly influenced the development of literature and the arts in the 20th century internationally. While there are excellent books dealing with futurism, the avant-garde, and Deleuze's philosophy individually, there is no book bringing together those two topics for comparison like this book does. It highlights for the first time the connection between the futurist manifestoes and Deleuze's philosophical writings, from both a conceptual and a linguistic perspective * Anna Lawton, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University, USA *