Deleuze and Democracy

Abstract

This article responds to Philippe Mengue's claim that Deleuzian political philosophy is fundamentally hostile to democracy. After outlining key elements of the attitude towards democracy in Deleuze and Guattari's work, it addresses three major arguments put forward in support of this claim. The first relies on Deleuze's rejection of transcendence and his critical remarks about human rights; the second relies on the contrast between majoritarian and minoritarian politics outlined in A Thousand Plateaus; and the third relies on the antipathy of philosophy towards opinion as outlined in What is Philosophy? After responding to each of these arguments in turn, I outline an alternative and more positive account of Deleuze and Guattari's critical engagement with opinion by way of a contrast with Rawls. Contemporary Political Theory (2005) 4, 400-413.

Masticating ‘quality’ and spitting the bits out

“…First, we might begin to consider (re)modifying ‘quality’, where it is understood as an experiment that unfolds and responds to the events of schooling. Corrupting Patton (2005: 404), but with good intentions, we want to consider whether the concept of quality could give expression to events of schooling whilst simultaneously being ‘betrayed’ by historical and contemporary forms of the concept. Might this process open up what Connolly (2002: 172 ) describes as ‘productive tensions’, where issues relating to quality can countenance ‘practical affective politics’ (Thrift, 2008: 214)?…”

Devenir-democrático frente a la sociedad de control

“…En rigor, una minoría corre el peligro de ser axiomatizada, por ello es necesario potenciar el devenirminoritario. No hay devenir mayoritario, esto no puede conducir al rechazo de la democracia, definida esta como el gobierno de las mayorías (Mengue, 2003;Patton, 2005). Todo se trata de hacer estallar las estrías estatales, sus segmentaciones duras, sus aparatos de resonancia.…”

The Contribution of Assemblage Theory and Minor Politics for Democratic Network Governance

“…The second idea is Deleuze's refusal of transcendence, which is one of the constant motifs of his philosophy. Deleuze's work renounces all forms of appeal to transcendent values, concepts of history or human nature in favour of a radical immanentism (Hillier, 2005;Patton, 2005). By subordinating the term 'reality' to the virtual and the actual he gains a critical distance from actual phenomenon without a need for resorting to transcendence.…”

“…Deleuzian thinking prefers ongoing and open-ended creative processes that lead to the modification of existing laws and political procedures as well as to the invention of new rights and forms of democracy, rather than to the declaration of essentialist (human) rights or 'democracy' as a transcendental 'good'. Such a case-by-case approach is a means to introduce movement into abstractions and thereby to approach the conditions of life more closely (Patton, 2005). If we share Dryzek's (2000) view that the aim of democracy is to pave the way for ongoing discursive contestation then the molecular/minor in the assemblage of governance networks opens up an understanding of 'intensive negotiating', where things emerge not through unity but through reconfiguring difference.…”

“…The minor only exists in relation to the major (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Acts of negotiation (expression and content) never entirely conform to the major standard but exist in a process of continuous variation (Patton, 2005). This variation keeps up the heterogeneous quality of the minor in itself and thus its energy, which is active under far-from-equilibrium conditions, where intensive differences are not equalized, where multiple identities could be actualized or where the productive tension of non-identity can be upheld.…”