Deleuze's Oxygen Machine

Since Deleuze’s suicide on Saturday, 4 November 1995, there have been a number of attempts to reconcile this event with the sense of vitalistic affirmation that pervaded his philosophy. This article questions the tendency to reterritorialise the event of Deleuze death in accordance with a Deleuzian orthodoxy, while taking particular issue with an all too ‘evidential’ account that was recently offered by Beaulieu and Ord. In contrast to this, our design fictional approach rallies images, anecdotes and constructive falsehoods in order to explore the intolerably sadomasochistic coupling of Deleuze to his oxygen machine, his umbilical attachment to Guattari, and his creative misuse of architecture (both philosophical and otherwise), in a bid to foreground the pluralistic, evential nature of Deleuze’s death – positioned, masochistically, as a beckoning for a people to come.