Abstract

In 1990, Antonio Negri pointed out some problems with Deleuze's political philosophy. Substituting infra-structures for life or desire, as constitutive dimensions of power formations, did not imply giving up on Marx, but it certainly did imply a change in the table of conceptual analysis and a profound renovation of the questions that pertain to militant praxis. Taking this into account, we intend to explore the sense of a rare fidelity to Marx, and a certain idea of intellectual commitment that, reframing its objects and its instruments, pretends to renew political thinking in order to confront the unforeseeable of new knowledge, new techniques and new political facts.

Keywords: Minor-dialectic, becoming-revolutionary, creation of assemblages, de-totalisation, ethics of struggle

In 1990, in an interview conducted by Toni Negri for the magazine Futur antérieur, Deleuze defended his fidelity to Marxism, that is, the idea that political philosophy finds its fate in the analysis and criticism of capitalism as an immanent system that constantly moves its limits and constantly re-establishes them on an expanded scale (Capital being itself the very limit). Furthermore, he also defended a re-evaluation of its objects and its instruments along the lines of a differential typology of macro and micro-assemblages as determinants of social life (Deleuze 1990: 229–39).

Substituting infra-structures for life or desire, as constitutive dimensions of power formations, did not imply giving up on Marx, if, as Derrida suggests, Marx had already alerted us to the historicity and the possible aging of his work; that is, to the necessity of transforming his own thesis to confront the unpredictability of new knowledge, new echniques, new political data (Derrida 1993: 35).