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<font face=3D"Arial, Helvetica" size=3D1><i>Letter to a Harsh Critic</i>
=95 11<br>
</font><font face=3D"Arial, Helvetica" size=3D2>[=85]So I=92ll move onto=
your other more cruel and hurtful criticism, when you say I'm someone who's=
always just tagged along behind, taking it easy, capitalizing upon other=
people's experiments, on gays, drug-users, alcoholics, masochists,=
lunatics, and so on, vaguely savoring their transports and poisons without=
ever taking any risks. You turn against me a piece I wrote where I ask how=
we can avoid becoming professional lecturers on Artaud or fashionable=
admirers of Fitzgerald. But what do you know about me, given that I believe=
in secrecy, that is, in the power of falsity, rather than in representing=
things in a way that manifests a lamentable faith in accuracy and truth? If=
I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my=
inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very=
obliquely and circuitously in what I write. And what do my relations with=
gays, alcoholics, and drug-users matter, if I can obtain similar effects by=
different means? What's interesting isn't whether I'm capitalizing on=
anything, but whether there are people doing something or other in their=
little corner, and me in mine, and whether there might be any points of=
contact, chance encounters and coincidences rather than alignments and=
rallying-points (all that crap where everyone's supposed to be everyone=
else's guilty conscience and judge). I owe you lot nothing, nothing more=
than you owe me. I don't need to join you in your ghettos, because I've got=
my own. The question's nothing to do with the character of this or that=
exclusive group, it's to do with the transversal relations that ensure that=
any effects produced in some particular way (through homosexuality, drugs,=
and so on) <i>can always beproduced by other means.</i> We have to counter=
people who think "I'm this, I'm that," and who do so, moreover,=
in <i>psychoanalytic terms</i> (relating everything to their childhood or=
fate), by thinking in strange, fluid, unusual terms: I don't know what I am=
I'd have to investigate and experiment with so many things in a=
non-narcissistic, non-oedipal way no gay can ever definitively say=
"I'm gay." It's not a question of being this or that sort of=
human, but of becoming inhuman, of a universal animal becoming</font><font=
face=3D"Arial, Helvetica" size=3D1><sup>8</sup></font><font face=3D"Arial,=
Helvetica" size=3D2>not seeing yourself as some dumb animal, but unraveling=
your body's human organization, exploring this or that zone of bodily=
intensity, with everyone discovering their own particular zones, and the=
groups, populations, species that inhabit them. Who's to say I can't talk=
about medicine unless I'm a doctor, if I talk about it like a dog? What's=
to stop me talking about drugs without being an addict, if I talk about=
them like a little bird? And why shouldn't I invent some way, however=
fantastic and contrived, of talking about something, without someone having=
to ask whether I'm qualified to talk like that? Drugs can produce=
<i>delire,</i> so why can't I get into a <i>delire</i> about drugs? Why=
does your particular version of "reality" have to come into it?=
You're a pretty unimaginative realist. And why do you bother reading me, if=
that's how you feel? Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad=
and reactionary arguments. My favorite sentence in <i>Anti-Oedipus</i> is:=
"No, we've never seen a schizophrenic."<br>
[...]<br>
Printed in Michel Cressole's <i>Deleuze</i> (1973)<br><br>
</font></div>
</html>
<font face=3D"Arial, Helvetica" size=3D1><i>Letter to a Harsh Critic</i>
=95 11<br>
</font><font face=3D"Arial, Helvetica" size=3D2>[=85]So I=92ll move onto=
your other more cruel and hurtful criticism, when you say I'm someone who's=
always just tagged along behind, taking it easy, capitalizing upon other=
people's experiments, on gays, drug-users, alcoholics, masochists,=
lunatics, and so on, vaguely savoring their transports and poisons without=
ever taking any risks. You turn against me a piece I wrote where I ask how=
we can avoid becoming professional lecturers on Artaud or fashionable=
admirers of Fitzgerald. But what do you know about me, given that I believe=
in secrecy, that is, in the power of falsity, rather than in representing=
things in a way that manifests a lamentable faith in accuracy and truth? If=
I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my=
inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very=
obliquely and circuitously in what I write. And what do my relations with=
gays, alcoholics, and drug-users matter, if I can obtain similar effects by=
different means? What's interesting isn't whether I'm capitalizing on=
anything, but whether there are people doing something or other in their=
little corner, and me in mine, and whether there might be any points of=
contact, chance encounters and coincidences rather than alignments and=
rallying-points (all that crap where everyone's supposed to be everyone=
else's guilty conscience and judge). I owe you lot nothing, nothing more=
than you owe me. I don't need to join you in your ghettos, because I've got=
my own. The question's nothing to do with the character of this or that=
exclusive group, it's to do with the transversal relations that ensure that=
any effects produced in some particular way (through homosexuality, drugs,=
and so on) <i>can always beproduced by other means.</i> We have to counter=
people who think "I'm this, I'm that," and who do so, moreover,=
in <i>psychoanalytic terms</i> (relating everything to their childhood or=
fate), by thinking in strange, fluid, unusual terms: I don't know what I am=
I'd have to investigate and experiment with so many things in a=
non-narcissistic, non-oedipal way no gay can ever definitively say=
"I'm gay." It's not a question of being this or that sort of=
human, but of becoming inhuman, of a universal animal becoming</font><font=
face=3D"Arial, Helvetica" size=3D1><sup>8</sup></font><font face=3D"Arial,=
Helvetica" size=3D2>not seeing yourself as some dumb animal, but unraveling=
your body's human organization, exploring this or that zone of bodily=
intensity, with everyone discovering their own particular zones, and the=
groups, populations, species that inhabit them. Who's to say I can't talk=
about medicine unless I'm a doctor, if I talk about it like a dog? What's=
to stop me talking about drugs without being an addict, if I talk about=
them like a little bird? And why shouldn't I invent some way, however=
fantastic and contrived, of talking about something, without someone having=
to ask whether I'm qualified to talk like that? Drugs can produce=
<i>delire,</i> so why can't I get into a <i>delire</i> about drugs? Why=
does your particular version of "reality" have to come into it?=
You're a pretty unimaginative realist. And why do you bother reading me, if=
that's how you feel? Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad=
and reactionary arguments. My favorite sentence in <i>Anti-Oedipus</i> is:=
"No, we've never seen a schizophrenic."<br>
[...]<br>
Printed in Michel Cressole's <i>Deleuze</i> (1973)<br><br>
</font></div>
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