Charles J. Stivale responds to Ian Buchanan

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A response to Ian Buchanan’s essay Deleuze and Pop Music

While I am in sympathy with Ian Buchanan’s approach, I find it difficult to agree at all with his premise that Deleuze’s philosophical position and personal taste place him in opposition to popular music. The opening paragraph suggests that this is both the received opinion — “Deleuze has been labelled a snob for his high-brow taste in music” — and also Deleuze’s stated position (a footnote to Deleuze’s Negotiations leads us to this conclusion). However I direct any interested web browser to view/read the summary that I have prepared of Deleuze’s 8-hour interview with Claire Parnet, entitled “L’Abecedaire de Gilles Deleuze“, particularly in ABC, part 3, the entries on “O as in Opera” and “T as in Tennis”, particularly the former on his appreciation of popular music, to see how far his philosophical position and his tastes were from the way that Dr Buchanan depicts them. I would have appreciated in a number of places in his essay if Dr Buchanan had attributed his arguments and premises rather than merely asserted them as givens.

Charles J. Stivale, Wayne State University, Detroit MI, USA

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