Surroundings: Deleuze and Guattari

Abstract

Deleuze and Guattari, as strict immanentists and consistent proponents of an “in-the-middle” or “in-between,” had little philosophical time for notions of “the outside” or “the beyond” construed in terms invoking traditional ideas of transcendence (even though they created their own absolutely original notion of an “immanent transcendence.” Any such “in-the-middle,” however, must presuppose a milieu that is outside that “in-the-middle,” albeit one constituting a surround or ‘interzone’ (a term borrowed from William Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch) for the “in-the-middle” in question, even if this surrounding milieu or interzone will, like its contiguous “in-the-middle,” also be unequivocally immanent. The essay discusses the kind of conceptual assemblage pertaining to interality/interology that can be constructed with regard to Deleuzo-Guattarian “surroundings.”