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https://fr.book4you.org/book/691205/ea93d6?dsource=recommend
"You ask me: why bring all these texts together in this book ? Why ‘Deleuze and Queer Theory’ ? What does this and mean ? You wonder whether it might be the expression of an opposition that will lead to a battle, a combat ; a war that will announce winners and dark horses, will declare the past dead and will celebrate a new future. Or maybe, it is a hope for juxtaposition and collaboration based on resonances, or differences. An attempt for reconciliation through the annihilation of the differential parties perhaps ? And as the middle space, the borderline that separates but also brings together ; and as the transit word, a force of transition towards something other that always entails a coming back: the becoming-DeleuzoGuattarian of Queer Theory, the becoming-queer of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory. And as the invisible in-between, the mystery gap, the topos of hidden erotic
connections, of contagious exchange, of unnatural encounters based on imperceptible micro-attractions and incompatibilities ; and as the experiment to think as two, to rethink through a two-fold process that amplifies what goes on in one’s thinking, that expands one single concept (queer), transforming it from a materialising signifier to an intrinsic quality of non-representational thinking. Thus, this project is primarily creative and not critical, and it is critical precisely by being creative. Rather than dismissing queer (theory), this collective work reaffirms the seductive power of the concept ‘queer’, and its continuing force to inspire thinking nowadays. Moving beyond, or along, lines of queer theory (in its institutionalised Anglo-American form) constitutes a living proof of the vital force of the concept of queerness: the force to affect and effect changes in the way one theorises, its capacity to produce deviant lines along established thinking and disciplines, its ability to queer the queer, that is, to undermine the self, to resist any normalisation." (p.1)
"Another question enters my mind: ‘Is queer theory a reflection on what it means to be queer, or does the concept of queerness change the ways in which we theorise ?’ (Colebrook, this volume). Whereas the first question presupposes a ‘being’ that is queer, and hence that theory is a mere reflection, mirroring, moulding, a grasping of what already exists as given or produced: the queer performative ‘being’ as a culturally given way of being queer, or better, a way of doing queer that constructs a supposed preceding being –‘the doer’, which has nevertheless always been the deed– the latter on the other hand signifies a rupture in the established ways of thinking, suggesting an intrinsic queerness in thinking and in theorising that breaks away from a representational thought, with the latter confusing what exists with what can be known (a conflation of ontology with epistemology). Where the Butlerian theory of performativity fits into the first definition, the Deleuzo-Guattarian thinking is inherently queer by distancing itself from a representational conception of thinking; hence, a thinking, which far from being reproductive (by representing, recognising) is primarily productive mainly by being expressive of non/extra-linguistic forces." (pp.2-3)
-Chrysanthi Nigianni, Introduction in Chrysanthi Nigianni & Merl Storr (eds), Deleuze and Queer Theory, Edinburgh University Press, 2009, 189 pages.
"You ask me: why bring all these texts together in this book ? Why ‘Deleuze and Queer Theory’ ? What does this and mean ? You wonder whether it might be the expression of an opposition that will lead to a battle, a combat ; a war that will announce winners and dark horses, will declare the past dead and will celebrate a new future. Or maybe, it is a hope for juxtaposition and collaboration based on resonances, or differences. An attempt for reconciliation through the annihilation of the differential parties perhaps ? And as the middle space, the borderline that separates but also brings together ; and as the transit word, a force of transition towards something other that always entails a coming back: the becoming-DeleuzoGuattarian of Queer Theory, the becoming-queer of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory. And as the invisible in-between, the mystery gap, the topos of hidden erotic
connections, of contagious exchange, of unnatural encounters based on imperceptible micro-attractions and incompatibilities ; and as the experiment to think as two, to rethink through a two-fold process that amplifies what goes on in one’s thinking, that expands one single concept (queer), transforming it from a materialising signifier to an intrinsic quality of non-representational thinking. Thus, this project is primarily creative and not critical, and it is critical precisely by being creative. Rather than dismissing queer (theory), this collective work reaffirms the seductive power of the concept ‘queer’, and its continuing force to inspire thinking nowadays. Moving beyond, or along, lines of queer theory (in its institutionalised Anglo-American form) constitutes a living proof of the vital force of the concept of queerness: the force to affect and effect changes in the way one theorises, its capacity to produce deviant lines along established thinking and disciplines, its ability to queer the queer, that is, to undermine the self, to resist any normalisation." (p.1)
"Another question enters my mind: ‘Is queer theory a reflection on what it means to be queer, or does the concept of queerness change the ways in which we theorise ?’ (Colebrook, this volume). Whereas the first question presupposes a ‘being’ that is queer, and hence that theory is a mere reflection, mirroring, moulding, a grasping of what already exists as given or produced: the queer performative ‘being’ as a culturally given way of being queer, or better, a way of doing queer that constructs a supposed preceding being –‘the doer’, which has nevertheless always been the deed– the latter on the other hand signifies a rupture in the established ways of thinking, suggesting an intrinsic queerness in thinking and in theorising that breaks away from a representational thought, with the latter confusing what exists with what can be known (a conflation of ontology with epistemology). Where the Butlerian theory of performativity fits into the first definition, the Deleuzo-Guattarian thinking is inherently queer by distancing itself from a representational conception of thinking; hence, a thinking, which far from being reproductive (by representing, recognising) is primarily productive mainly by being expressive of non/extra-linguistic forces." (pp.2-3)
-Chrysanthi Nigianni, Introduction in Chrysanthi Nigianni & Merl Storr (eds), Deleuze and Queer Theory, Edinburgh University Press, 2009, 189 pages.
