The Idiocy of the Event: Between Antonin Artaud, Kathy Acker and Gilles Deleuze

Exploring the evolution of the conceptual persona of the idiot from the philosophical idiot in Deleuze to the Russian idiot in Deleuze and Guattari, this article suggests that their use of the figure of Antonin Artaud as a model for an idiocy that is freed from the image of thought is problematic since Artaud in fact evinces a nostalgia for the capacity for thought. The article invites the writings of Kathy Acker and argues that Acker makes possible a more successful way of thinking of the event of thought beyond the Image and thereby a new conceptual persona of the post-Russian idiot.