User:Lbattich/th - rough sketches

Gilles Deleuze's theories of the proper name

This essay is concerned with critically examining the concept of the proper name as it is developed through the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, addressing this development, or rather trajectory, in particular texts from different periods, Nietzsche and Philosophy, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy?. The thesis will be concerned in elucidating a Deleuzian perspective on the theory of the signature and the proper name, in close relation to the work on authorship by thinkers as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, commonly associated with the 1960s discourse of the ‘death of the author’. This discourse generally hinges on the trope of the author’s intention and its relevancy (or lack thereof). I will seek to examine the role of the proper name beyond the question of intentionality, and rather as a mediator in-between the physical person and its subjectivity, the author-function exercised by it, and the text or artwork where this function is manifest.

The philosophical position of Gilles Deleuze (and Feliz Guattari) provides a platform to approach this question. On one hand Deleuze provides the theoretical tools to examine the construction of identity through the encounters of underlying forces. On the other hand Deleuze's own remarks apropos the proper name point to a theory based not on representation, but rather on 'effects.' This paper will propose that, following Deleuze’s analyses, the proper name conveys an act of depersonalization, opening up different multiplicities that pervade the named author, and are only actualized depending on the conditions of the reader. How can Deleuze’s position assist in both elucidating and problematizing what the role of the proper name is in our relationship to a body of work or a set of concepts, as readers and authors, and how authorial subjectivities are constructed by the use of proper names?

[In a way, Deleuze is quite conservative on his approach to the use of proper names and authorial relevance, especially in What is Philosophy?...]