Deleuze and Analysis: Lack◇Excess
A New Year-Long Course by Terence Blake starts January 15th 2025
In 2025, Philosophy Portal will be hosting a year-long course titled “Deleuze and Analysis: Lack◇Excess” taught by Prof. Terence Blake. "Deleuze and Analysis: Lack◇Excess" is a ten-session course that delves into the philosophical intersections between Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, focusing on the dynamic interplay of lack and excess as central themes in their works. Through critical readings and discussions, the course examines how both thinkers conceptualize desire, drive, machinism, language, subjectivity, and the production of jouissance. By exploring key texts and integrating perspectives from philosophers like Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of how Deleuze and Lacan's ideas converge and diverge, contradict and sublate, enriching contemporary philosophical research programmes.
The course employs the diamond-punch ◇ as a creative heuristic to navigate complex theoretical landscapes, fostering insightful analyses of concepts such as desire as production, the creation of concepts, and the ontology of the Real.
Designed for individuals interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, this course invites participants to engage deeply with transformative ideas that challenge traditional paradigms and open new avenues for thought.
Terence Blake is a philosopher whose postgraduate work focused in epistemology and the philosophy of science. He admired and worked on the pluralist thought of Paul Feyerabend and James Hillman before discovering the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard and taught himself French to be able to read their books in the original language. ANTI-OEDIPUS and RHIZOME in particular were a revelation.
Blake attended the lectures of Foucault, Deleuze and Lyotard in Paris in the 1980s. He also met his wife in Paris, and after 7 years moved South to Nice, on the French Riviera (books are fine but I also need sun and warmth!) where he studied linguistics with Jean-Claude Souesme. He obtained the agrégation (specialising in linguistics) is at present an English teacher in a senior high school and at the university.
Blake is interested in contemporary French philosophy on the general theme of “pluralism, individuation, and a world of becoming”, principally: Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, François Laruelle, Bruno Latour, Alain Badiou, but also likes Hubert Dreyfus, Stanley Cavell, and William Connolly.
Sessions / Schedule:
2025 / Online / Wednesdays 7pm CET (Central European Time)
- January 15th / Session 1: The Incipit of “Anti-Oedipus” — Desire, Drive, and the Enunciative Context
- February 19th / Session 2: Contextualising “Destroy, Destroy…” — In “Anti-Oedipus”
- March 19th / Session 3: The Noetic Paths of Deleuze and Lacan —Exploring "I Have Nothing to Declare" and Lacan's Introduction to Seminar XI
- April 16th / Session 4: Deepening the Understanding of Deleuze and Lacan’s Paths — Deleuze's Dialogues and Lacan's "Tuché and Automaton"
- May 21st / Session 5: Moving Beyond Stereotypes — Deleuze and Lacan's Shifts in Theoretical Focus
- June 18th / Session 6: Alain Badiou as a Bridge Between Deleuze and Lacan — Ontologies of Multiplicities and the Real
- September 17th / Session 7: Desire as Production — Deleuze and Guattari's Collaboration and Lacan's Theory of Discourses
- October 15th / Session 8: Slavoj Žižek as a Bridge Between Deleuze and Lacan — Exploring the Alliance Around the Real
- November 19th / Session 9: What Is Philosophy? Analyzing Philosophy Through the Graph of Desire and the Creation of Concepts
- December 17th / Session 10: The Diamond-Punch ◇ as a Creative — Condensing the Underlying Logic of Desire, Excess and Pulsation
Two ways to access: purchase the course as a stand-alone seminar, or join The Portal as a monthly/yearly member
Learn more or sign up