Deleuze in the confines of political philosophy: is there a Deleuzian political philosophy?

Abstract

This article deals with one of the crucial themes of Deleuzian philosophy: the political question in the work of Gilles Deleuze. This is a topic still open to discussion. In the prolific field of study on the political question in Deleuze's philosophy, the possibility of determining a specific criterion of the political has been addressed by different commentators. Such is the case, for example, of Badiou, Žižek and Mengue, who have attributed to him an ethics, an aesthetics and a reflexive philosophy on late capitalism, but have denied him belonging to the field of political philosophy. Other divergent perspectives have dealt with the issue by rethinking the macro-political aspects of Deleuze's philosophy, thus dodging the problem of a political ontology, focusing on other variables, such as the form-state, the problem of sovereignty, law, the question of war, raciality and colonialism. A general look at these materials seems to confirm our initial assertion: the problem of determining the specificity of the political in Deleuze is not a closed issue. For these reasons, we consider it necessary to take up the challenge and the polemic to which Deleuzian studies have been summoned: would there be such a thing as a politics in Deleuze? To answer this challenge we need to situate the problem and discuss it in the very context in which it arises: political philosophy.