The “Incarnation” of Immanence: On the Genealogy and Sense of Gilles Deleuze’s “New Christ”
Shi Hui
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School of Liberal Arts, Renmin University of China
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About authors:
Shi Hui is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Liberal Arts, Renmin University of China. His research interests include Western literary theory and comparative literature.
As a staunch antitheological philosopher, Gilles Deleuze paradoxically uses many theological expressions to analyze Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener”, and even considers Bartleby as the “New Christ” in our time. This seems to contradict his principle of immanence. In fact, Deleuze explicates Bartleby in the Christological genealogy of SpinozaNietzscheLawrence. Through an interpretation of the formula “I would prefer not to”, he makes Bartleby the “New Christ” whose “nothingness of the will” dispels transcendence and embraces immanence. The life of “New Christ” was expressed visually in Francis Bacon’s Crucifixion paintings. Moreover, in accordance with Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics, what the “New Christ” preaches is a gospel “beyond good and evil”, inspiring human beings to proceed from passivity to activity. Therefore, the “New Christ” throughout Deleuze’s works on philosophy, literature and art is the “incarnation” (which means "logos became flesh") of immanence. In this case, “logos” indicates the logic of immanence and “flesh” signifies “body without organs”.