2013

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Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hiller in conversation with Gareth Abrahams
(AESOP, 2013-07) Hiller, Jean; Abrahams, Gareth
This publication is structured around a number of ‘conversations with planners’. But, we might ask, what do we mean when we talk about a conversation, and what is this conversation for? This question is considered in Deleuze’s work with Claire Parnet (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002). Deleuze argues that most conversations are structured around a number of dualisms both in the form of the conversation (the interviewer/interviewee; the question/answer), and the content of the conversation (do you think this or that?) These dualisms, he argues, can often lead us into instances in which the ‘aim is not to answer questions (but) to get out’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002: 1). This is made all the more problematic, he suggests, because most questions are ‘already worked out on the basis of the answers assumed to be probable according to the dominant meanings’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002: 15). Thus, rather than creating something new, these questions and answers re-trace taken-for-granted relationships between selected ideas. ‘Western democratic conversation between friends’ write Deleuze and Guattari, ‘has never produced the slightest concept’ (1994: 6). If we should focus our attention on creating concepts, as Deleuze and Guattari (1994) suggest, then should we discard conversations as a meaningful contribution to such an exercise?