Description: Tynan addresses Deleuze's assertion, that 'literature is an enterprise of health', and shows how a concern of health and illness was a characteristic of his philosophy as a whole, from his earliest works to his collaborations with Guattari, to his final, enigmatic statements on 'life'. He explains why alcoholism, anorexia, manic depression and schizophrenia are key concepts in Deleuze's literary theory, and shows how, with the turn to schizoanalysis, literature takes on a crucial political and ethical role in helping us to diagnose our present pathologies and articulate the possibilities of a health to come.
Brief description: Aidan Tynan Senior Lecturer in English literature at Cardiff University. He is the author of Deleuze's Literary Clinic: Criticism and the Politics of Symptoms (Edinburgh, 2012). He had co-edited two volumes: Credo Credit Crisis: Speculations on Faith and Money (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Literature (Bloomsbury, 2015).
Review Quotes: How should we think about health after Deleuze and Guattari? What kind of symptomatology and idea of the clinical do they affirm? Why is literature at the heart of these questions? With exceptional clarity and sensitivity, Aidan Tynan gives us subtle and much needed answers. His investigation points to a new and liberating critical practice.--James Williams, University of Dundee