The Reflections on Different Lithuanian Artists on an International Scale

Abstract

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1955) is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable and influential French philosophers of the 20th century. In the 1960s, he was considered as left-wing Nietzschean metaphysician in France. In the 1980s and 1990s – after being translated – Deleuze became influential in the Anglo-Saxon world, mainly in the field of literary theory. At the beginning of the 21st century, such thinkers as Zizek, Sokal, Badiou and Descombes discussed fundamental topics with the French coryphée. The book of Baranova, Junutytė and Duoblienė marks a new step in the reception of Deleuze, turning to the Eastern part of Europe. In his works, Deleuze discusses main philosophers of the western tradition such as Leibniz, Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, Bergson and others. On the other hand, he is a great reader of literature: Proust, Sacher Masoch, and Kafka. Deleuze found in Guattari an intellectual friend and co-writer for a lot of books. Deleuze’s main philosophical project can be summarized as an inversion of the traditional metaphysical relationship between identity and difference. In this sense, he inscribes himself in the tradition of French deconstructionism that reflects on Heidegger’s Identität und Differenz. Traditionally, the difference is seen as a declination of identity. For Deleuze, on the contrary, identity is the result of differences. A second mark of his thought is the uni-dimensionality of being (the so-called immanent ontology rooted in the univocity of being).