Didier Eribon on Deleuze and Lacan’s Divergence
**Interview: “Le ‘Je me souviens’ de Gilles Deleuze” (1995)
In Le Nouvel Observateur (No. 1619, 16–22 Nov. 1995), Didier Eribon published an interview titled “Le ‘Je me souviens’ de Gilles Deleuze.” Conducted shortly before Deleuze’s death, this conversation explicitly addresses Deleuze’s relationship with Jacques Lacan. Eribon asks Deleuze about his encounters with Lacan, prompting Deleuze to “remember” key moments . Deleuze recounts that Lacan took notable interest in his early work – devoting a seminar session to Présentation de Sacher-Masoch (1967) – and even attended one of Deleuze’s lectures in Lyon, where Lacan delivered a “quite unbelievable” talk . More importantly, Deleuze describes a tense meeting initiated by Lacan a few months after the 1972 publication of Anti-Oedipus. Deleuze recalls that Lacan had likely taken Anti-Oedipus “badly,” given its radical critique of Freudian–Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan “summoned” Deleuze to his home, made him wait among a crowd of patients and admirers, then received him only to declare that all Lacan’s own disciples were “worthless (nuls)” – except Jacques-Alain Miller – and finally quipped to Deleuze, “C’est quelqu’un comme vous qu’il me faut” (“I need someone like you”) . This vivid anecdote, published by Eribon, highlights the intellectual gulf between Deleuze and Lacan. Deleuze’s anti-Oedipal ideas clearly unsettled Lacan, illustrating the divergence in their outlooks (with Lacan positioned as the patriarch of psychoanalysis and Deleuze as a rebel thinker of desire). The full interview (two pages in the magazine) offers Eribon’s firsthand record of Deleuze reflecting on Lacan, and it has since been reprinted in French in Deux régimes de fous: Textes et entretiens 1975–1995 (2003) and in English translation (as part of Two Regimes of Madness, Semiotte, 2006). In this exchange, Eribon effectively draws out Deleuze’s own perspective on Lacan – revealing both Deleuze’s respect for Lacan’s early insight and his awareness of Lacan’s hostile reaction to the Anti-Oedipus project.
**Essay: “Sickness unto Life – The Life and Works of Gilles Deleuze” (1996)
Soon after Deleuze’s death, Eribon penned a substantial essay on Deleuze’s philosophy and intellectual trajectory. Titled “Sickness unto Life” (a reference to Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death), it appeared in Artforum International, Vol. 34 No. 7 (March 1996), and serves as both tribute and critical overview. In this piece (originally in English), Eribon analyzes Deleuze’s lifelong philosophical themes and pointedly addresses Deleuze’s break with Lacanian psychoanalysis. Eribon notes that Anti-Oedipus (1972), co-authored by Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “hit France like a bomb in 1972” – exploding onto a Parisian intellectual scene where “psychoanalytic discourse had achieved a position of great prominence” and Freudo-Lacanian ideas (often combined with Marxism) dominated radical thought . Eribon emphasizes the “liberatory shock wave” that Anti-Oedipus produced in this context . By directly challenging the Oedipal framework of psychoanalysis, Deleuze and Guattari opened up new ways of thinking about desire and subjectivity, starkly at odds with Lacan’s structuralist psychoanalytic theory. In “Sickness unto Life,” Eribon thus contextualizes Deleuze’s divergence from Lacan: he describes how Deleuze rejected the transcendent authority of the psychoanalytic father-figure and instead affirmed a “plane of immanence” in philosophy . The essay also alludes to Lacan’s influence indirectly – for example, by describing how Anti-Oedipus confronted the then-prevailing Freudo-Marxism (a trend strongly associated with Lacanian circles). While Eribon does not mention Lacan by name in this Artforum piece, he clearly frames Deleuze’s work as a radical break from the Lacanian paradigm of desire-as-lack. Notably, Eribon observes that Anti-Oedipus appeared at a time when Lacanian psychoanalysis was seen as “the only possible instrument of liberation” on the left, and that Deleuze’s anti-Oedipal philosophy offered a powerful alternative . In summary, “Sickness unto Life” provides a bibliographic portrait of Deleuze’s thought – including a brief account of the Anti-Oedipus revolt against psychoanalytic orthodoxy – and thus serves as a key text where Eribon reflects on Deleuze’s philosophy in relation to Lacanian psychoanalysis. (Bibliographic reference: Didier Eribon, “Sickness unto life – the life and works of Gilles Deleuze,” Artforum International 34:7 (March 1996), pp. 13–14.) .
**Later Reflections: Eribon on Deleuze and Lacan’s Intersections (1989–2014)
Beyond the 1990s, Eribon has continued to comment on the theoretical divide between Deleuze’s ideas and Lacanian psychoanalysis in his scholarly work. In his influential French-language book Michel Foucault (1926–1984) (Flammarion, 1989; English trans. 1991), Eribon situates Foucault’s intellectual milieu, noting how figures like Foucault and Deleuze initially engaged with structuralist and psychoanalytic thought but later turned away from Lacanian frameworks. Eribon observes, for instance, that Foucault’s early archaeological work was in part inspired by Lacan’s ideas, but by the 1970s Foucault (much like Deleuze) had become thoroughly anti-psychoanalytical, explicitly opposing Lacanian notions of law and desire . This historical analysis in Eribon’s biography implicitly highlights the common front that thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze formed against Lacanian doctrine. Eribon’s own stance is evident – he characterizes this shift as a move toward an “ethics of subjectivation” rather than an acceptance of psychoanalytic authority .
A more direct elaboration appears in Eribon’s essay “Toward an Ethics of Subjectivation: French Resistances to Psychoanalysis in the 1970s,” published in the edited volume Foucault Now (ed. James Faubion, Polity Press, 2014). Here, Eribon examines how French intellectuals of the 1970s – prominently Deleuze and Guattari – resisted and critiqued the dominant Lacanian psychoanalytic paradigm. He discusses the fissure between Lacan and the post-’68 generation of theorists: Lacan is portrayed as representing the law of the Father and a structuralist rigor, whereas Deleuze (along with Guattari and Foucault) championed a more liberating conception of desire, subjectivity, and social change. According to Eribon, the publication of Anti-Oedipus was a defining moment in this “French resistance” to Lacan . In the essay, Eribon reflects on how Deleuze’s anti-Oedipal contentions (e.g. rejecting the idea that desire is structured around manque, or lack) appealed to many, including Foucault – who openly aligned himself with Deleuze’s positions as opposed to “the despotic signifier” of Lacanian theory . Eribon notes that by the mid-1970s, thinkers like Deleuze had firmly distanced themselves from structuralist psychoanalysis, forging an intellectual “filiation” with each other instead of with Lacan . Through such analysis, Eribon underscores the philosophical intersections and departures: Deleuze and Lacan both theorize desire and the subject, but Deleuze’s approach (schizoanalysis, immanence, the production of desire) fundamentally diverges from Lacan’s symbolic order and concept of manque. Eribon’s 2014 essay provides a concise overview of these divergences, reaffirming points he had made in earlier works – that the legacy of May ’68 produced a new ethical and political orientation in French theory, one that broke from Lacan’s influence. (Bibliographic references: Didier Eribon, Michel Foucault (Paris: Flammarion, 1989), see pp. 138–139 and 153–155 on Foucault’s break with Lacan; “Toward an Ethics of Subjectivation: French Resistances to Psychoanalysis in the 1970s,” in Foucault Now, ed. J. D. Faubion, Polity, 2014.) .
**Additional Interviews and Discussions
It is worth noting that Didier Eribon conducted multiple interviews with Deleuze (often for Le Nouvel Observateur) during the 1980s and early ’90s, which, while not focused on Lacan, shed light on Deleuze’s philosophy and indirectly contrast it with contemporaries like Lacan. For example, an August 1986 interview (later titled “Life as a Work of Art” in English, included in Deleuze’s Negotiations) has Deleuze and Eribon discussing Michel Foucault’s concept of self-stylization . Here Deleuze expounds an ethics of existence opposed to transcendent moral law – a stance consistent with his rejection of psychoanalytic norms. Likewise, a September 1991 dialogue with Deleuze and Guattari (published as “We Invented the Ritornello” for the release of Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?) touches on creativity, science, and philosophy’s role, implicitly contrasting their philosophy of immanence with the more structural, transcendental approach of figures like Lacan . While Lacan is not explicitly mentioned in those conversations, Eribon’s questions often invite Deleuze to position philosophy against other disciplines’ “privileges” – for instance, Eribon asks if Deleuze’s definition of philosophy (as concept-creation) might be seen as “restoring the traditional privilege” of philosophy, to which Deleuze responds by rejecting any hierarchy of concepts over functions . Such exchanges underscore, in an implicit way, Deleuze’s effort (which Eribon highlights) to break free from the transcendent judgments and fixed subject positions that psychoanalysis (particularly in its Lacanian form) imposed.
In sum, Didier Eribon’s writings and interviews provide rich commentary on the Deleuze–Lacan relationship. Through an original French interview (“Je me souviens…”) and later reflections in both French and English, Eribon documents how Deleuze diverged sharply from Lacan’s psychoanalytic doctrine. He offers biographical anecdotes (like Lacan’s frosty reaction to Anti-Oedipus ) as well as analytical context (situating Deleuze’s anti-Oedipal philosophy as a liberating counter-current to Lacanian theory ). Eribon’s 2014 essay in particular serves as a theoretical coda, analyzing how and why thinkers of Deleuze’s generation broke with Lacan in the 1970s . Together, these sources by Eribon (in French original and in translation) form a coherent narrative: they highlight Deleuze’s philosophy of desire, creativity, and “life” in contrast to Lacan’s psychoanalytic structuralism – mapping both the personal encounter between Deleuze and Lacan and the broader intellectual intersection (and contestation) of their ideas.
Sources:
- Didier Eribon, “Le ‘Je me souviens’ de Gilles Deleuze,” Le Nouvel Observateur no. 1619 (16–22 Nov. 1995), pp. 50–51. Interview in French where Deleuze reminisces about Lacan’s seminar on his work and a post-Anti-Oedipus meeting . (Reprinted in Deux régimes de fous*, 2003; Eng. trans. in* Two Regimes of Madness*, 2006.)*
- Didier Eribon, “Sickness unto Life – the life and works of Gilles Deleuze,” Artforum International vol. 34 no. 7 (March 1996), pp. 15–16. Essay (in English) reviewing Deleuze’s thought, noting the impact of Anti-Oedipus against the backdrop of dominant Lacanian psychoanalysis .
- Didier Eribon, “Toward an Ethics of Subjectivation: French Resistances to Psychoanalysis in the 1970s,” in Foucault Now, ed. J. Faubion (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), pp. 111–128. Analytical essay discussing how Deleuze (with Guattari, and Foucault) broke from Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts in the 1970s .
- Interviews in translation: Gilles Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, ed. David Lapoujade (New York: Semiotext(e), 2006). Contains Eribon’s 1991 interview “We Invented the Ritornello” and excerpts of the 1993/95 “I Remember” interview with Lacan anecdotes. See also Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972–1990, trans. M. Joughin (NY: Columbia UP, 1995) for the 1986 Eribon interview “Life as a Work of Art.”
