L’acefalo – l’insensibile – gli incontri. La genesi del pensiero in Gilles Deleuze

The article tracks down the path traced by Gilles Deleuze in the third chapter of "Difference and Repetition" (1968), where he critiques thought's tendency to represent its own activity as spontaneous and natural. On the contrary, by recalling Artaud, Deleuze aims to show how thought is not an innate faculty but must be generated by a traumatic experience. The text therefore delves into the strong connection between Deleuze's philosophy of experience and his reflection on the genesis of thought. The first one implies a revision of the concept of "transcendental", which, far from being intended as the set of conditions which make experience possible, in this context designates the meta-empirical field of intensities which actively produces experience. The last section of the essay explains how the rise of this bottom layer of reality engenders a specific experience which disrupts the ordinary coordination of faculties and therefore the daily procedures of thought. This sort of experience is what Deleuze, in his previous work "Proust and Signs" (1964), defines as an involuntary encounter that forces thought into thinking.