Starting again with the new: Why Read Deleuze

I just submitted my first drafts of my first comprehensive exam on Queer Theory. These ended up being rather open ended forays into thinking a lot of my past scholarly work (on urbanism, public space, environment and sexuality) in terms of a few constellations of queer theory (on time, on utopia, on antirelationalism, on trans-theory). Now that I’m done with that for the moment, I’m wading into all together more terrifying territory with Deleuze, Guattari, and Lefebvre. I’m reading these philosophers together in an attempt to draw some connections between geophilosophy (D+G) on the one hand and theories of planetary urbanism (Lefebvre & Co.) on the other. As I plunge into primary texts, I’m also looking for any good suggestions on secondary (READ: SHORT) texts which situation some of the contemporary debates in both fields and, to whatever extent it is already being discussed, in the overlapping territory of both fields.

So, here’s my rather terrifying stack of books for the next couple of weeks:

So, do you have any answers? Why read Deleuze? Here’s one go at it from the contributors at HTMLGIANT — my first googled encounter with an answer to this question.