Deleuze and (Anti-)Dialectics

Ksenia Kapelchuk

doi:10.33280/2310-3817-2019-7-1-340-362

Ksenia Kapelchuk

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2019-7-1-340-362

Keywords: dialectics, Deleuze, Hegel, Žižek, virtuality, chance, repetition, Chronos, Aion

Abstract

The article analyzes the critique of dialectics within the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the response to this critique that has been proposed by Slavoj Žižek. As a rule, Deleuze’s philosophy is considered to be anti-dialectical and anti-Hegelian. In lieu of this interpretation, Žižek has proposed an alternative reading whereby, Deleuze himself appears to be a dialectician and a Hegelian. The article attempts to answer the following question: in what sense can we consider Deleuze's philosophical project to be a dialectical one? The author reveals the different meanings of dialectics that are explicitly present in Deleuze’s works and also conducts an analysis of the implicit similarities—as identified by Žižek—between Deleuze's arguments and Hegel's philosophy. Thus, the author offers a comparative analysis of the concepts shared by Hegel and Deleuze (the virtual, chance, repetition), distinguishing between Deleuze's and Hegel's projects,as well as between their respective interpretations by Žižek.

Author Biography

Ksenia Kapelchuk

Associate Research Fellow, Sociology Institute of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FCTAS RAS),
Teaching Assistant, ITMO University,
49 Kronverksky Pr., St. Petersburg, Russia 197101
E-mail: ksenya_ka@list.ru

References

Badiou, Alain (2006). Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Buck-Morss, Susan (2009). Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Comay, Rebecca (2011). Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari (1983a). Anti-Oedipus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. [1972]. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1983b). “Plato and the Simulacrum.” Trans. Rosalind Krauss. October 27: 45–56.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1990). The Logic of Sense [1969]. Trans. Mark Lester. London: Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles (1994). Difference and Repetition [1968]. Trans. Paul Patton. London: Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari (1994). What is philosophy? [1991]. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1997). Cinema 1. The Movement-Image [1983]. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (2006). Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962]. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. London: Continuum.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (2010). The Science Of Logic [1813 and 1816]. Trans. George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (2018). The Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]. Trans. Terry Pinkard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaufman, Eleanor (2012). Deleuze, the Dark Precursor: Dialectic, Structure, Being. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kralechkin, Dmitriy (2006). Deleuze bez oslozhneniy [Deleuze without complications]. Censura.ru. [In Russian]
Kralechkin, Dmitriy (2007). Antiposlesloviye perevodchika. Kritika ne v fokuse. [Translator’s anti-afterword. Criticism out of focus]. In Anti-Oedipus: Kapitalizm i shizofreniya [Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia]. Ekaterinburg. [In Russian]
Malabou, Catherine (2004). La Plasticité au soir de l'écriture. Paris: Éditions Léo Scheer.
Malabou, Catherine (2009a). La Chambre du milieu, de Hegel aux neurosciences. Paris: Hermann.
Malabou, Catherine (2009b). Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press.
Malabou, Catherine, and Judith Butler (2010). Sois mon corps: Une lecture contemporaine de la domination et de la servitude chez Hegel. Paris: Bayard.
Sinnerbrink, Robert (2006). “Nomadology or Ideology? Žižek's Critique of Deleuze.” Parrhesia, 1: 62–87.
Smith, Daniel W. (2004). “The Inverse Side of the Structure: Žižek on Deleuze on Lacan.” Criticism, 46.4: 635–650.
Zandvoort, Bart, and Rebecca Comay, eds. (2018). Hegel and Resistance. London: Bloomsbury.
Žižek, Slavoj (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London & New York: Verso.
Žižek, Slavoj (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London & New York: Verso.
Žižek, Slavoj (2004a). The Reality of the Virtual. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBRToxGyKZo
Žižek, Slavoj (2004b). Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. London and New York: Routledge.
Žižek, Slavoj (2007). “Filosofia nachinaetsya s Kanta y zakanchivaetsya Gegelem.” [Philosophy starts with Kant and ends with Hegel]. Logos 1.58: 3–13. [In Russian]
Žižek, Slavoj (2012). Less Than Nothing. Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London and New York: Verso.