Concept and History: The (Trans)disciplinarity of Deleuze and Guattari’s Political Philosophy

Abstract

While Deleuze and Guattari’s workhas been criticized from a number of angles, one of the most pernicious readings is Alain Badiou’s claim that since Deleuze and Guattari assign an irreducible disciplinary modality to philosophy but not to politics in their What is Philosophy? (1991), we should consider their philosophical ontology as both pre-established and ultimately indifferent to concrete political considerations. By examining the disciplinarity of philosophy in Deleuze and Guattari, in its dynamic relation to extra-philosophical domains, this article shows that far from constituting an obstacle to the development of political critique, an irreducible conception of philosophy as a discipline, rather, conditions such critique. The article explores this point with regard to the difference between history and becoming in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, and in terms of the shift that takes place in their work from a structuralist to a machinic philosophical ontology.