The Life of an Idiot
Artaud and the Dogmatic Image of Thought after Deleuze
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2352754 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jon K Shaw (Goldsmiths University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 7-8 |
| Pages | 237-252 |
| Publication date | 2016-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theory Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263276416650723 |
| OpenAlex | W2409547366 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 7 |
The conceptual persona of the idiot recurs and evolves over the decades between Deleuze's Difference and Repetition and his final book with Guattari, What is Philosophy?, shifting from a philosophical question to a nonphilosophical one that allies thought with literature and life. The great figure of this shock of literature is Antonin Artaud who, Deleuze argues, refinds thought's creative capacity by putting it back in touch with its immanent outside - with a machinic and pre-personal 'unthought'. This essay will argue that by turning to works from later in Artaud's œuvre, especially the 1946 poem-cycle Artaud le Mômo, the problem of idiocy meets a correlative problem concerning life and death. Artaud establishes a four-fold of thought-unthought-life-unlife which is problematically resolved in what he calls a 'body', a figure which I will argue requires that we rethink the relationship Artaud experiences between idiocy and suffering
Aesthetics · Art · Deleuze and Guattari · Epistemology · Humanities · Idiot · Literature · Persona · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Repetition (rhetorical device · French Literature and Critical Theory · French Literature and Criticism · French Literature and Poetry · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |