Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari were French thinkers whose work, though once obscure, has come to be regarded as an important resource for the development of the theory and practice of the global justice movement (GJM), particularly the libertarian, horizontal, disaffiliated part of it. While their work is dense and difficult to digest for those uninitiated in the arcane world of contemporary French theory, many of the concepts they developed in their joint work have nonetheless passed into the lexicon of the GJM. These include most notably the concepts of the “rhizome,” “minoritarianism,” “deterritorialization,” “multiplicity,” and “nomadic” thought and practice. Deleuzo-Guattarian themes have been picked up by a range of contemporary authors and activists, most notably Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri , whose joint works Empire (2001) and Multitude (2004) are replete with terms borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari. The latter's work has informed the development of a variety of heterodox leftist currents, including primitivism (Feral Faun, John Zerzan), immediatism (Hakim Bey), insurrectionary anarchism (Alfredo Bonanno), and postanarchism (Todd May, Saul Newman) – all of which have adherents in the GJM. Deleuze and Guattari were very different characters with very different training. Deleuze built his reputation as an iconoclastic academic philosopher in the 1950s and 1960s ... log in or subscribe to read full text