Deleuze and his other

Abstract

The concept of the other (autrui) did not receive due attention in Deleuze's philosophy as a whole until recently (VENTURA, 2020; FERREIRA, 2021). The Other appears in Deleuze’s work in some moments of Difference and Repetition, in What is philosophy? – a work written together with Félix Guattari – but, above all, in a text present in the appendix of Logic of Sense entitled “Michel Tournier and the world without others”, in which he comments the M. Tounier’s novel, Friday or the pacific limbo. The Other is nothing but the expression of a possible world, or even a structure that organizes perception and ensures the margins and transitions of the world. When this structure dissolves, the simulacra ascend to the surfaces, destroying the forms and releasing the forces and intensities. We believe that the agent of this dissolution is Friday, whose coming disrupts the order forged by Robinson on his island. Friday no longer functions as the structure-other, since it is another of the Other, which will allow access to an impersonal, pre-individual transcendental field, populated by free singularities. Emmanuel Lévinas's concepts of “face” and “wholly other” (tout autre) will help in this movement in order to understand Deleuze's other, although it is necessary to point out its pertinence and its limitations.