Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Gilles Deleuze was a significant twentieth-century philosopher whose critiques of essentialism and rationalism made important contributions to theories of postmodernity and poststructuralism. The philosophical standpoint he elaborated was one which emphasized the immanent possibilities for change manifested in things themselves. Bodies, objects, ideas, and social formations all possessed potentials for difference and deviation inherent in themselves. This view contradicted that of his chief philosophical interlocutor, Hegel (and all those upholding a Hegelian dialectical tradition), in which change was viewed as the result of external encounters or “negations” imposed from without. Deleuze's philosophical project followed that of Nietzsche in emphasizing the affirmative property of things, and linking the agent with the act itself, denying traditional philosophical concepts of causality, will, and intention. Indeed, his philosophical oeuvre is defined by interrogations of the philosophical canon ranging from Plato to Nietzsche, Spinoza, Bergson, and Hume for conceptions of the world that emphasized such immanent properties of becoming and change. These themes were developed and applied more broadly to a range of political and social arenas through books co-authored with his longtime writing partner Félix Guattari. Most notably it was through a two-part investigation of the contemporary ... log in or subscribe to read full text