Distant Affinities: Speculative Realism and the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze

This article explores and contrasts Deleuze’s thought and speculative realism (SR). Focusing on their respective approaches to art, it aims to show that the Deleuzian perspective can be regarded as a critique of SR’s treatment of art. It starts by demonstrating that a particular strand of SR known as object-oriented ontology (OOO) is unable to account for contemporary art as we know it. It then contrasts the approach of OOO with Deleuze’s thought, which endorses art and demonstrates an understanding of the nonhuman that can help to resolve some of the problems encountered by OOO. Having explored the differences between Deleuze’s thought and SR with respect to art, the article goes on to examine their similarities. It shows that both Deleuze and a rationalist offshoot of SR take an analogous approach to the relation between philosophy, art and science. Here, not only Deleuze and SR, but also SR and art, find common ground.