Bifo:I would really be pleased if I were able to do so.GM: Well, another question we had was about the collaboration between
Deleuze and Guattari, Deleuze without Guattari, Guattari without Deleuze,
but basically, your book is devoted to Guattari, to Félix.Bifo:Yes, and there’s a long chapter on Deleuze.GM:Yes, but we were wondering to what extent Deleuze was important for
you. That is, would you have written a book on Deleuze?Bifo:No! Because I am not the most suitable person to write a book on
Deleuze. Let’s say that some things in Deleuze are extremely important
for me, and just to mention one for all, Nietzsche and Philosophy. This is
a political book, philosophical but also political, of fundamental
importance. Perhaps it is Deleuze’s clearest book, but it is also a book
from 1962, so while it was really early, it anticipated many themes that
are now extremely timely on both the political and social planes. But
basically I do not consider myself to be sufficiently a philosopher in
order to address Deleuze in a direct way. While I seem to be just dirty
enough from the disciplinary point of view, rather contaminated – I
don’t really know what I am – just confused enough in my disciplinary
background to be able to approach this ...GM:Well, Guattari was also rather mixed from the disciplinary perspective.Bifo:Guattari was educated as a pharmacist, that is, he was someone
trained in mixing substances. And when he spoke, often he sounded
like a plumber, with all these things about flows, tubes, cutting, tight-
ening. That is, Guattari was truly the philosopher who tried to make
the linguistic, conceptual machine work in relation to the links to exist-
ence, to the social, and so forth. In this sense, I feel much closer to
him. This is not only why Guattari greatly influenced my develop-
ment, but I met him when I was 27, so I was already sufficiently
trained to feel him as someone I understood perfectly.GM:OK, and beyond what we know about their way of collaborating, about
what Deleuze has said, for example, speaking in the ‘vous’ form, things we
know about, do you have any knowledge about the modalities of writing that
they adopted while working together, any anecdotes about how they wrote
together?Interview with Franco Berardi (Bifo) 1559780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 155