The Idea of the Image of Thought

Gregg Lambert (Syracuse University), Gregg Lambert

As Raymond Bellour recently wrote: “There would be a history to write, spanning the twenty-six books written by Deleuze alone and in collaboration [with Guattari]: a precise, tangled history of this term and idea of the Image of Thought.” In fact, this theme can be traced throughout Deleuze’s entire oeuvre, beginning from the period of his works on Nietzsche and Proust (circa 1963) and providing a central context for defining the activity of philosophy as the creation of new concepts in the final work conceived (if not actually written) together, What Is Philosophy? (1991).  Deleuze describes the idea of the “image of thought” in the 1994 preface to the English translation of Difference and Repetition as “the most necessary and concrete [problematic]” that serves as an introduction to subsequent works written after 1968.  The fact that Deleuze chooses to highlight this aspect of his work for an English-speaking audience, and in light of the reception history of his translated works to date, makes this statement an important cue for reorienting the understanding of his entire philosophical project both before and afterward. In my talk, therefore, I will concentrate on the third chapter of Difference and Repetition, “The Image of Thought,” in order to underline its significance for understanding Deleuze’s philosophical project.