L’ile deserte et autres textes (review)

With the new volume edited by David Lapoujade entitled L’île déserte et autres textes, Deleuze studies now has a major new work to discover. The volume contains previously unedited texts from Deleuze’s first twenty years (1953-1973); a second volume was just published by Minuit (2003), covering the next two decades, entitled Deux régimes de fous. Textes et entretiens 1975-1995. As if to consecrate the first volume’s publication, the French literary review Magazine littéraire published a special dossier on Deleuze, entitled “L’effet Deleuze” [the Deleuze effect] (no. 406, February 2002; selected translations available at http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/EffetD/Effet-TOC.html). The volume contains texts that correspond to approximately five genres or sub-genres of Deleuze’s writings and activity: colloquia presentations, book reviews, introductions to books by other authors, interviews, and occasional essays focusing on literary texts, the history of philosophy, and specific philosophical concepts, from the early 1950s into the period of the early 1970s contemporary with the publication of L’Anti-Oedipe (1972) and its aftermath.