the philosophical climate 10-15 years from now

Surprises always await us in the future, but certain rough guesses as to the contours of the future are always possible. I once heard someone on television say: “you have to remember, the ’60s really happened in the ’70s”. That made me wonder if, more generally, one can often project the next decade based on features already emerging in this one. I first considered this at length in about 1998, in a Chicago bar with my ex-flatmate Paul, and we did correctly guess that major urban terrorist incidents would be a key feature of the ‘Zips, or whatever the current decade is going to be called in retrospect.

In any case… Deleuze now occupies the “cutting-edge classic” niche that still belonged to Derrida when I started graduate school. I’m not saying they’re of exactly the same stature (I think Deleuze is a far sight better) but I also don’t think that Deleuze is someone of the order of Kant, whose changed view of the history of philosophy became a more or less permanent part of the philosopher’s arsenal. In other word, Deleuze-related stocks are bound to be a bit overvalued right now, and we’re bound to see a “market correction” at some point.

The view from the UK may have been different. But my own first glimpse of the Deleuze tsunami came in May 1994, at the IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) Conference in Edmonton. A Deleuze panel with two relatively young and unknown panelists drew a standing room only crowd, and it was a chic and energetic crowd. Shortly after the paper, one of the panelists (an acquaintance of mine) was approached for sex by a stranger in the audience! When things of this sort happen, you know a new fashion has arisen. I returned to Chicago saying “the Deleuze wave is coming, watch out” and received a number of snippy responses from Derrideans that only convinced me all the more that I was right.

This might not seem very foresightful anymore, and in 1994 may already have been old hat if you were a student at Warwick (I don’t know the exact chronology). But in the early 1990’s in the USA, Deleuze wasn’t really on the radar as an imposing major figure. If you had a serious interest in French philosophy, you were still focusing on Derrida. Deleuze was largely viewed as an amusing French entertainer, maybe a half-step above Baudrillard.

We know what happened later, and where Deleuze is now. Although I find his attitude incredibly refreshing, and though he’s much more a philosopher than those who were popular just before him, I’m not completely sold. I don’t talk about this often, because I’m still not sure I “get” Deleuze, and want to keep delaying a final personal verdict.

But what I am sure of is that a few aspects of his reading of the history of philosophy bother me, and I don’t think they will be missed. And I do think Deleuze’s counter-history of philosophy will eventually fall out of fashion in a hurry, since while not lacking in substance, I don’t think he’s of the stature of Kant or Heidegger, and hence his readings of past philosophers come off more as creative reversals of the norm rather than as anything that digs deep and will last long. I’m tired of everyone referring to Scotus and never to Aquinas or Suarez. And I’m tired of Leibniz being distorted into another version of Spinoza and Spinoza being given better air time. (Spinoza’s a great philosopher, but Leibniz is one of the Über-greats.)

I’ll write more about this in the future; it’s just a first stab. But I think we can expect that many of the key features of Deleuzianism will experience a reversal. I’m not saying Deleuze is going into the trash can, I’m just saying he’s not Kant or Heidegger, and he’s unlikely to seep into our bones over the long haul the way the other two have and will.