Chapter Two Critique of Linguistics
‘Linguistics has done a lot of harm’
Abécédaireis a series of cassettes containing eight
hours of filmed interviews between Gilles Deleuze
and Claire Parnet.^1 Towards the end of his life (Deleuze
had demanded that the cassettes should only be
released after his death), the philosopher constructs
a balance-sheet of his oeuvre, of which he presents
the exoteric version, with all the clarity and enthusiasm
of a great teacher. And as he speaks to us from beyond
the grave, he can adopt a spiteful attitude, candidly
say things that are usually precluded by courtesy.
Thus, Wittgenstein is characterised as an assassin of
philosophy, Umberto Eco is not spared, and linguistics
‘has done a lot of harm’. Obviously, it is the last
sentence that interests me.
The passage is to be found under the letter S: ‘S
is for Style’. Parnet asks Deleuze for a definition of
style and he responds by making a detour via
linguistics:
To understand style, you don’t need to know
anything about linguistics. Linguistics has done
a lot of harm. Why? There is an opposition
between linguistics and literature: they are not
attuned. For linguistics, language is a system in(^1) Deleuze and Parnet 1997.