I recently read Ray Brassier’s doctoral work Alien Theory. Although unnecessarily obscure and dense at crucial points, Brassier offers several very interesting points, especially on the connection between Deleuze and Laruelle. One idea I am particularly interested in is the supposed ‘ideality’ of the plane of immanence in Deleuze, previously discussed here and here. Contrasting it to the phenomenological positing of the transcendental field, Brassier writes:

What is idealizing about the Deleuzoguattarian reduction is that the plane is instituted not according to the form of absolute consciousness as ‘self-giving’, but rather through the philosophical Concept as ‘self-positing’ or as a relative-absolute which pre-supposes the plane in and through its own self-supposing or self-positing…. The plane has to be philosophically constructed; yet it is also that which constructs itself through philosophy…. (2001, p.63)

Brassier’s Hegelian formulation is far from being accidental. What is it stake is precisely the “hyletic continuum” that lies at the center of Deleuze’s project. Continue reading