- Deleuze and Pragmatism eds. by Sean Bowden et al.
The editors of this collection aim to fill a notable gap in the scholarship on Gilles Deleuze, pragmatism, and their reciprocal relations. This task [End Page 312] is approached along two main lines, corresponding roughly to the volume’s two parts: on the one hand, by reconstructing Deleuze’s direct or potential engagements with classical pragmatism, while on the other hand by investigating the real or virtual exchanges between Deleuze’s rich philosophical production and most contemporary varieties of pragmatism. As the editors explain in their useful stage-setting introduction to the volume, it is a telling fact that, despite Deleuze’s deep interest in pragmatism and an overlapping of concerns and themes, no work has yet addressed the issue of their multiple relations. This volume aims at filling this curious void in the literature. According to the editors, both Deleuzians and pragmatists are missing out by not engaging with each other: Deleuze scholars seldom take his interest in pragmatism seriously and most pragmatist scholars do not even take Deleuze as a promising philosophical interlocutor. This volume is thus offered as a generous and forceful venture at philosophical integration driven not by an attempt at either reduction or harmonization, but rather by a desire to challenge accepted philosophical divisions, an approach that should eventually enrich both parties to the conversation.
Deleuze’s sustained engagement with classical pragmatism in his original philosophical work, as well as in his incisive incursions into the history of philosophy and the philosophy of cinema, analyzed by the contributors in the first part of this collection from a number of different angles, is congenial to the reconstruction of the very background against which further critical investigations of the relations between Deleuzian thought and the successive embodiments of the pragmatist tradition are possible. In this direction, the overall goal of the volume is, in the words of the editors, “not to show that Deleuze should be read as a pragmatist, any more than it is to suggest that elements of pragmatist philosophy should be considered “Deleuzian”,” but rather to suggest how “the relationship between Deleuze’s philosophy and the rich and diverse tradition of pragmatist thought is worthy of further exploration” (14) by both Deleuzians and pragmatist thinkers. The volume thus aims at building a dialogue between the Deleuzian and the pragmatist constellations of thinkers and writings. In addition to there being many themes shared by the two, there are also others that they do not share but which we, with the aid of the authors, want to try to integrate into their respective ways of understanding and practicing philosophy. What awaits the reader, as the editors claim, is thus not the promise of a final assessment of the relationship between the two factors of the equation Deleuze and pragmatism, but rather the promise of a broadening of the very investigation set up in the volume.
Despite forming an extremely fascinating mosaic, the various chapters of the collection run in all sorts of directions, of which it is impossible to give more than an impressionistic presentation. The already mentioned introduction by the editors will prove particularly helpful [End Page 313] in giving the reader a rough sense of the scope of the volume. Given the limited space, in the rest of this review we aim at assessing the results of this exercise in comparison and exchange by surveying one chapter from each of the two parts of the volume. Our choice is driven exclusively by our own philosophical tastes and interests, and does not reflect a negative judgment of the many exciting chapters we will not be touching upon.
The chapter by Simone Bignall on “Deleuze, Dewey, and Democracy” represents an intriguing attempt at philosophical integration of Deleuze and Dewey on the theme of democracy. The problem Bignall highlights is the alleged lack of a full-fledged political philosophy in Deleuze: according to Bignall, Deleuze’s commitment to a democratic ethos remains ambiguous and implicit...
