Killing Oneself, Killing the Father: On Deleuze's Suicide in Comparison with Blanchot's Notion of Death

摘要

Deleuze appropriates Blanchot's notion of the second death, the pure form of the event, which never happens. Hence Colombat interprets Deleuze's suicide as an act of joining this pure form. But, if we consider Deleuze's difference from Blanchot, the importance of the first death, an incident which actually happens, stands out. Deleuze's thought of the inseparability of the two deaths illuminates the necessity of his suicide. His suicide is their junction, which resists both their separation and the reduction of the second death to the first. Revealing the former in the midst of the latter, his suicide turns out to be the act of killing God as the Father and Deleuze himself as the father of his philosophy of life, in order to free the multiplicities of life from unifying paternal authority.