A new ontology that forms the groundwork for ethical practices of resistance What and how should individuals resist in political situations? While these questions recur regularly within Western political philosophy, answers to them have often relied on dogmatically held ideals, such as the distinction between truth and doxa or the privilege of thought over sense. In particular, the strain of idealist political philosophy, inaugurated by Plato and finding contemporary expression in the work of Alain Badiou, employs dualities that reduce the (...) complexities of practices of resistance to concepts of commitment. (shrink)

Para proponer una aproximación a Gilles Deleuze, preguntaremos en este trabajo por la naturaleza en y de un encuentro. Para desarrollar esto, buscaremos enfatizar que aquella naturaleza se expone en la relación entre signo y acontecimiento en la medida en que ella expresa el carácter vital de aquella. Si esto es así, lo que tendríamos que considerar es que aquello que nos volvería a dar aquella relación supone la introducción de la forma vacía del tiempo. Esto nos llevará a postular, (...) en cuanto aquella forma no está ahí sino para un excesivo informal, o sea, en cuanto aquella forma abisma el sin fondo del pensamiento, que es en la relación entre arte y pensamiento que se jugaría otra experiencia de aquel en tanto en cuanto volvería un encuentro en y con ella a experimentarse; encuentro que ejemplarme expondría aquella naturaleza. (shrink)

Just how eternal is the Eternal Return? This article examines how Foucault's readings of Nietzsche and of Deleuze critically revise the Return so as to arrive at a concept of contingency that is itself contingent. I argue that this archaeological/genealogical rereading problematises the Return as presented in Difference and Repetition; when the Return is presented as ‘the form of change [that] does not change’, it risks returning eternally to the Same – for all its avowed affirmation of difference. By returning (...) the Return to its own historically contingent epistemic conditions of possibility, Foucault repeats Deleuze's philosophy with maximum difference. (shrink)

The article explores a particular mode of time synthesis as carried out in the field of Islamic micro-finance in Indonesia. It approaches this financial experiment through Deleuze's tripartite division of time and the concept of promise advanced here. I argue that the analytical promise the concept of promise holds is partly related to its ability to circumscribe a field of practice that is at once theological and economic and partly to its privileging of the time of the future. What the (...) study of Islamic micro-finance offers to studies of Deleuze is a timely reminder that this explicit privileging is not adequate in and of itself for ‘relativising’ the effects of habit and memory on time, thought and politics. This is primarily because promising has a dual, ‘schizoid’ and distressed constitution: it is motivated as much by the affirmative ‘will to power’ as by the negative ‘will to improve’. (shrink)

Speculative realists have directed a radical critique towards what they call “correlationism,” the stance according to which we only have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. Both Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier have used Gilles Deleuze’s ontology as a paradigmatic example of correlationism. Instead of defending Deleuze from this accusation, I argue that we need to accept it, but that the correlation is drastically transformed when we take into (...) account Deleuze’s panpsychism. I hence contend that Deleuze is a panpsychist, grounding my argument in (a) his theory of contemplations and (b) his account of the universe as a cinema in itself. This changes everything, since a panpsychist type of correlationism avoids the main problem that leads both Meillassoux and Brassier to try to overcome correlationism, namely, that of the possibility of existence before and after humans. (shrink)

“Deleuze and the Inversion of Kantism”. In this paper we aim to look into French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s work in order to see whether there is such a thing as a ‘reversal of Kantianism’, parallel to his more well-known reversal of Platonism. To this end, we will propose, firstly, to read in the key of reversal the movements made by Deleuze regarding intensity and extension, on the one hand, and the paradox of inner sense, on the other. Then, we will (...) analyze why Kant had already accomplished two great reversals, regarding the classical conception of both time and law, and consequently, we will develop the Deleuzean conception of Nietzschean eternal return as a simultaneous reversal of both aspects. Finally, we will inquire about the tropos of the aforementioned reversal, calling on the concepts of humor and irony. (shrink)

This article examines Nietzsche’s enduring influence on Deleuze by showing how the interpretation advanced in Nietzsche and Philosophy informs Deleuze’s later work with Guattari. I analyse Deleuze’s reading of the will to power as a typology of forces and his interpretation of the Overman as a pinnacle of creative activity with an eye towards demonstrating that these are not merely Deleuzian creations but are also defensible interpretations of Nietzsche; and I suggest how these portions of Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche influence (...) his concepts of desiring-production and nomadism, respectively. By analysing Deleuze’s relation to Nietzsche as a longue durée, we can better appreciate how Deleuze’s early reading of Nietzsche is carried forward in his later work. (shrink)

What and how should individuals resist in political situations? While this question, or versions of it, recurs regularly within Western political philosophy, answers to it have often relied on dyads founded upon dogmatically held ideals. In particular, there is a strain of idealist political philosophy, inaugurated by Plato and finding contemporary expression in the work of Alain Badiou, that employs dyads (such as the distinction between truth and doxa or the privilege of thought over sense) that tend to reduce the (...) complexities of practices of resistance to concepts of commitment. Although these dyads have been challenged by, amongst others, poststructuralist theorists, this has often been at the cost of losing their structuralist heritage. This thesis develops an ontology proper to structuralism that engenders non-idealist and non-dogmatic, yet ethical, practices of resistance against commitment orientated accounts of resistance and the return of classical ontological dyads. The thesis begins with an examination of the extent to which a dogmatic use of idealism grounds the work of a prominent contemporary theorist, Alain Badiou. In developing his neo-Maoist metapolitics, Badiou follows both Platonic ontology and the Marxist tradition of dialectics by claiming that political practice can only be carried out in truth by paying fidelity to an event that ruptures the presented order of things. Chapter one opens with an exploration of Badiou's mathematic meta-ontology to draw out its three foundational dyads (truth/doxa; sense/intelligibility; is/is not). It is argued that although Badiou makes important criticisms of the preponderant trends of political philosophy, he is unable to support his own account of politics due to his dogmatic reliance on idealist principles. Chapter two begins by developing two accounts: first, of the relations between Badiou's work and that of his former teacher Louis Althusser and, secondly, the relations between Althusser's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his reading of David Hume. Discussion centres around the importance of the role that time plays within the works of all three authors, particularly in regard to the idea of the void. The chapter concludes with the argument that Hume's temporal idea of human nature is the key to a symptomatic reading of Althusser that accounts for the persistence of ideas in the latter's social theory. In chapter three, Deleuze's reading of Hume's idea of relations is developed to take into account Bergson's theory of time. Read in contrast to Quentin Meillassoux's speculative realism, the chapter argues that Deleuze's account of temporal relations informs Althusser's social theory to create the ontological grounds for non-dogmatic and non-idealist practices of resistance. These practices are developed in chapter four with an unlikely turn to John Stuart Mill's idea of genius, the metaphysical property of the individual that signifies the discovery of new truth. The chapter begins with an argument that there is an under-developed account of ethics in Deleuze's work. Distinguishing the idea of genius from both Mill's moral philosophy, as well as from utilitarian thought more generally, the idea of genius is sutured onto Deleuze's ontological account of individuation. Read alongside Althusser's social theory, which accounts for the non-idealist conceptualisation of situations, this suture creates an ethically oriented structuralist ontology. The thesis concludes with the argument that the idea of genius is the ethical imperative that motivates practices of resistance. When individuals are understood as embodied within situations, practices of resistance are conceptualised not against other components of a situation, but contra them, taking them into account in order to amplify, multiply and transform the individual's potential within a situation. (shrink)