Flaubert's bêtise as a way into Deleuzian Ideas

FERREYRA, JULIAN

Cambridge

Conferencia; Flaubert's bêtise as a way into Deleuzian Ideas; 2012

Havard University

It has been said that Flaubert´s (1821-1880) writing constitutes itself as a journey through and against the received Ideas of the stupidity (that is the English translation for the French bêtise, that has that meaning but also a connotation of Beast). One of the things that were more often the target of Flaubert´s attack was indeed the fact of human stupidity, this tendency we have to embrace hasty, preconceived conclusions, and let them lead our thought always through the same path. From the Dictionary of Received Ideas to Bouvard and Pécuchet (whose subtitle was meant to be the encyclopedia of human bêtise) to the correspondence, stupidity has a very important place in Flaubert´s reflections. Gilles Deleuze shared Flaubert´s aversion: he thought that to proceed by preformed ways, by already done associations was not really thinking. Deleuze´s philosophy struggles against what he calls the "dogmatic image of thought", that makes us think that we have Ideas, when we do not. When we really think (trough art, trough philosophy, trough science) we proceed by new, unexpected ways.