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Gilles Deleuze and the apolitical production of being

Gilles Deleuze’s ontology is often understood to ground a kind of radical pluralism, the political defense of which is thought to be articulated most strongly in the Capitalism and Schizophrenia books. It is clear, however, that this “politics” is defined in a wholly negative way, and that the revolutionary dimension of these books is animated by a strictly ethical logic. In my view, if there is a politics in Deleuze it must be understood in relation to the central problem of his ontology: namely, the problem of understanding how Being is produced. To grasp politics as a singularity, as a mode of ontological production, has a number of radical consequences – consequences, however, that Deleuze himself did not embrace. Ultimately, Deleuze’s conception of ontological production appears marked by an apolitics, in that any effective mobilization of Being’s transformative potential requires that we stand posed to sacrifice anything of the integrity and organizational capacity of political existence that limits the expression of Being itself.

  1. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/942
Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVIV.1828/942
Date15 May 2008
CreatorsPaugh, Tim
ContributorsMagnusson, Warren
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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