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A Marxist Encounter with the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze*

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A Marxist Encounter with the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze* chapter 11 A Marxist Encounter with the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze* I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in a long time. – Michel Foucault1 ∵ At the outset let me describe what I mean by an ‘encounter’. Gilles Deleuze proposes in his Dialogues with Claire Parnet that to encounter is to enter into a ‘becoming’ with forces outside of oneself in order to create a kind of ‘asym- metrical block’ or ‘a-parallel evolution’.2 Of course there can be both good and bad encounters. As Deleuze observes elsewhere, when we encounter forces that ‘agree’ with us, our ‘power of acting’ is ‘increased’ or ‘enhanced’, and we experience the passion of joy. On the other hand, when we encounter forces that don’t agree with us, our power of acting is ‘diminished’ or ‘blocked’,and we experience the passion of sadness.3 For Marxists who are accustomed to thinking in terms of interventions, an encounter may seem to lack the supposed rigour of a dialectical methodology or science. Yet in the history of Marxism, such rigour has often amounted to little more than overt domination or covert manipulation of others within a given practical or theoretical field. There is no reason, of course, why we should adopt this particular conception of a more general concept of intervention – or to think that all Marxists have adopted it. For example, we only have to recall one of Louis Althusser’s greatest achievements: theorising what Marxists mean when they conceive of, or seek to carry out, interventions. Althusser enables us to identify and reject the caricature that for decades had passed for Leninism but in reality was only Stalinist deformation. * This chapter has been previously published in Rethinking MARXISM 3.3–4, 1990, pp. 287–96. 1 Foucault 2009, p. xiii. 2 Deleuze 1987, pp. 7–10. 3 Deleuze 1988c, pp. 27–8; see also Deleuze 1969, pp. 218–25. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004280984_013 212 chapter 11 So if I retain the concept of encounter, it isn’t because I think that Marxists should give up the concept of intervention, but because I want us to envi- sion intervention even more than Althusser does as an immanent, risk-laden engagement with forces that can either strengthen or weaken us, but that we seek to control unilaterally only at our peril. I want to provoke us to take Deleuze as much as possible on his own terms without preconceived notions of where his philosophy might lead. If Althusser teaches us anything, it is that it is both possible and necessary to abandon the pursuit of a specifically Marxist philosophy without ceasing to advance the cause of Marxism within philosophy. But philosophy involves the creation of new concepts.4 As a result, the time is long overdue for Marxists who work within philosophy to become philosophers within Marxism: to elab- orate new concepts that might contribute to the revitalisation of our tradition, to encounter forces outside Marxism that might help us to regain some of the joy we have lost during our prolonged crisis. How might Marxists encounter Deleuze’s philosophy? Before answering this question, let me immediately suggest that it is badly posed, for any encounter between a Marxist and Deleuze must include an encounter with Félix Guat- tari as well.5 Furthermore, we must consider not only Guattari’s collaboration with Deleuze6 but also his separate work in its mutual, even if asymmetrical, presupposition with Deleuze’s own work.7 Let us consider, then, the following possible entry for Marxists into both Deleuze and Guattari’s writings. Deleuze and Guattari are probably best known for their notion of molecular or ‘micro’ politics. What most commentators have failed to see, though, is the extent to which this micropolitics can best be understood as an attempt to develop an ethics intended to supplement Marx- ism. In the rest of this chapter I first examine what Deleuze and Guattari mean by micropolitics and what limitation in Marxism it is intended to correct. Secondly, I argue that, although micropolitics understood as an ethics of desire differs from usual notions of ‘morality’, it retains a normative dimension that can help to expand and regenerate a revolutionary socialist project for our time. 4 Deleuze 1988d, p. 16. 5 Antonio Negri has rightly insisted on ‘the productive place’ that these ‘two thinkers, so differ- ent from each other, travelled through together, coexisting and confronting each other’ (Negri 2011, p. 156). 6 See Deleuze and Guattari 2009 [1972]; Deleuze and Guattari 1986 [1975]; Deleuze and Guattari 1987 [1980]; and Deleuze and Guattari 1994 [1991]. 7 See Guattari 1995; 2000; 2011; 2013..
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