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On Gilles Deleuze’s birthday: on the philosophical significance of co-authoring

Today, January 18, is Gilles Deleuze's (1925-1995) birthday. The French philosopher would've become 99 had he lived to see the day. He died at the age of 70, in 1995 following a long pulmonary illness that plagued him for much of his life, which either drove him to suicide, or perhaps led him to accidentally fall out of a window. 

I only very recently got into his work, as I read his monographs on Spinoza and Nietzsche (both excellent). I am intrigued by the inherent paradoxical nature of Deleuze as a philosopher. He focuses on liberty, resisting societies of control, and standing out from the crowd, refusing to vote for your own oppressors, refusing to be tied down by conventional morality, for which he took inspiration in both Nietzsche and Spinoza. At the same time, he was for all appearances a regular guy, married to Denise Paul "Fanny" Grandjouan) from 1956 until his death, he raised two children with her, living a quiet life where he did not travel much.  

Deleuze is known for co-authoring with his good philosophical friend Félix Guattari, a psychoanalyst. 

I've written about philosophical friendships and their importance on the Cocoon earlier, here.

Here, I'd like to think about the philosophical significance of Deleuze and Guattari's long-term collaboration and friendship, notably in the works Anti-Oedipus (1972) and its successor Mille plateaux (1980), as well as their opinionated textbook Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991).

Deleuze guattari

Co-authoring is even now not appreciated in philosophy. Most of the canonical works in philosophy are not only sole-authored but almost emphatically so, by isolated lone individuals (who are not really lone and isolated, of course, as they conversed with others). I've frequently co-authored and early on was warned it could be harmful for my career, but I was lucky. I am glad I did not have to relinquish co-authoring as I really like the process, which is so very different from sole-authoring. 

Deleuze and Guattari make some substantive philosophical remarks about the process of co-authoring in their preface to A thousand plateaus (Mille Plateaux) 

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.

In the light of this, I'm curious for reader's favorite co-authored works in philosophy. Feel free to mention classics, or to discuss any pieces you co-authored yourself and that you really like.

Don't be shy! Especially early career folk are pushed to sole author that it's important to push back against this focus on singular minds. Let's celebrate our collaborative ventures. 

Deleuze's work reminds us philosophical brilliance does not need to be in (ostensibly) isolated minds. We can be aided, inspired, multiplied, by our philosophical friends and co-authors. 

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5 responses to “On Gilles Deleuze’s birthday: on the philosophical significance of co-authoring”

  1. Kenneth Novis

    The writing of Anti-Oedipus is also a curious story! According to Francois Dosse, “Their first book was written primarily through letters. This approach to writing completely upset Guattari’s daily life, because it forced him to work alone, which was not his habit, as he had been used to directing his groups. Deleuze expected Guattari to wake up and get to his desk right away, to outline his ideas on paper (he had three ideas per minute), and, without rereading or reworking what he had written, to mail his daily draft. He imposed what he considered to be a necessary process for getting over writer’s block. Guattari followed the rules faithfully and withdrew into his office, where he worked slavishly until four o’clock in the afternoon every day, after which he went to La Borde to quickly make his rounds before returning to Dhuizon, generally around six o’clock. […] For the most part, the writing plan for Anti-Oedipus was that Guattari sent his texts to Deleuze, who then reworked them for the final version.”

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  2. Javier Gomez-Lavin

    Thanks for this, Helen, it’s a treat to read and reflect on. Coming from a background in the life-sciences I took for granted that publications were more likely than not co-authored. I like to think that’s why I’m drawn to the examples of co-authored work that, from time to time, dominated the scene of empirically-informed philosophy of mind. Examples like Clark and Chalmers, Adams and Aizawa, and the kind that became more and more common with the spread of experimental philosophy (Knobe and Nichols etc.). As an empirical philosopher of mind who works in experimental philosophy, I find myself operating in a similar pattern, co-authoring most of my published work–usually with the same cast of cherished philosophical partners who I’m happy to call my friends (a shout out to my long standing collaborator and friend Matt Rachar who has shown me just what a great co-authoring experience looks like). Especially when you’re operating in the interstitial space between disciplines (xphi and philosophy of action for example) it’s so helpful (if not necessary) to have an informed interlocutor from another perspective to work with. However, it’s not always easy to write with others–schedules and implicit expectations can often make a seemingly simple task take ages (for instance, Matt and I have gone back and forth on the minutia of the wording of an vignette for a given experiment for what seems like months). But approaching these kinds of commitments with a standing expectation to listen and to care (and especially with the norms of friendship hovering over us) helps keep communication flowing and the interpersonal risks at a minimum. I’m also lucky to be at an institution that values co-authored contributions and I wish it was a more common experience (or at least something that was attempted or encouraged) by folks in our field. Nothing in my experience has opened intellectual horizons in the same way as sharing agency over a common intellectual project, and I think we’d be the better to encourage the practice as a whole.

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  3. Peter West

    Matyáš Moravec and I wrote an essay ‘In Praise of Co-Authoring’ in philosophy a couple of years ago:
    https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/in-praise-of-co-authoring
    Interestingly, we received a response from Justin Weinberg and David Bourget at PhilPapers that evidenced that while levels of co-authoring in philosophy are still relatively low, they are on the rise:
    https://dailynous.com/2021/10/14/co-authorship-in-philosophy-over-the-past-120-years-bourget-weinberg/?fbclid=IwAR3FJIDw0PRgf2IsrIQL2fjyMYY5L__FWpt1tzXMJSfGtSQmGA8sOze260o

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  4. anon

    Thanks for this post Helen! It is very important I think that we discuss this issue. I am very frustrated to see constantly that our discipline (especially as it is in the States) does not encourage colloboration. I am a grad student at a top research university and I can not even imagine how it would be possible to write a paper for instance with my advisor who is also a young scholar. I would guess most people in our profession care a lot about hierarchy. I have seen people in my area not even wanting to share their work let alone colloboration… And in my personal experience, colloboration almost seems impossible if you are especially doing history of philosophy.

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  5. fichte stan penny

    I find Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn’s friendship very fascinating philosophically. They did occasionally co-author, but their more interesting stuff is how their own individual points of view are so clearly shaped by their encounter. Each of them is a Leibnizian, and this was frequently the basis for their philosophical conversations, but they also wrote in the second half of the 18th century, well after the first generation of reception of Leibniz’s philosophy in Wolff, Baumgarten, etc. Therefore, they each pushed the Leibnizian framework in very interesting directions away from orthodox Christian views in a way Leibniz and the first generation of Leibnizians famously did not. Fascinating example to me of a very productive and deep philosophical friendship.

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