October 28, 2007
Tell Mrs Broadhurst I can’t make it to the Red Mercury meltdown either
[...] [A]ided by the English translations which finally became available between 1980-90, the reception of [Deleuze and Guattari’s] oeuvre progressed noticeably: “In England, ‘deleuzians’ sought neither to commentate on his work, nor to apply it. They tried rather to ‘assemble with it’ – in cinema, in sculpture, in performance art, in rock music.” The Warwick philosopher, Keith Ansell-Pearson, clearly engaged with deleuzian positions and even qualifies Deleuze as a “difference engineer”.
Nick Land, a character become mythical because invisible since he abandoned teaching, also taught philosophy at the University of Warwick. He sought to connect the two volumes of “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” with Norbert Wiener’s work on cybernetics, but also with esotericism and science-fiction. In the 90s, he organised several cultural happenings on themes like “Virtual Futures”, “Afro-Futures” and “Video-Technics”, bringing together in the same event conferences and techno-parties at the venerable University of Warwick, little-accustomed to such types of rhythm.
— François Dosse, Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari: Biographie Croisée (Paris: La Découverte, 2007), pp. 568-569.