Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T16:52:07.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Faith, Creation and the Future of Deleuzian Subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2024

Andrew M. Jampol-Petzinger
Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University, Michigan
Get access

Summary

Having now established some of the basic elements of a Deleuzian-Kierkegaardian notion of selfhood – one which is adequate to the concept of ethics sketched in the earlier chapters – I want to elaborate some of the ideas discussed there in the direction of a possible political interpretation of these questions, if only for the sake of indicating the kinds of productive directions in which a comparison of the two philosophers might be taken. One recent direction of research that has been interestingly adumbrated in Kierkegaard scholarship has to do with the subtle political value of his thought, showing how the Kierkegaardian emphasis on possibility and embodiment might contribute towards ideas about political materialism and non-teleological thinking. On the other side of things, one element of Deleuze's reading of Kierkegaard that has been taken up in secondary literature (to some extent) is the category of ‘belief’, which, as we have seen, serves in Deleuze's later writings as a central concept related to the open-endedness of the relationship between the individual and her environment or ‘world’. In this chapter, I want to bring some of these themes together in order to show how – for Deleuze – the category of belief can serve to link an implicit political dimension to his ethical thought, and to confirm this account through an indication of some of the recent developments in Kierkegaard scholarship that move Kierkegaard's supposedly individualistic account in the direction of a collective politics. In particular, we will see below how the category of belief, which draws upon notions of identity distinct from private, individualistic concerns as well as from overly generalised ‘group’ concerns, allows for a mode of political engagement that brings individuals into an immediately political domain, one where political action need no longer be mediated through loci of stereotyped, ‘collective’ enunciation – that is, it will be possible to draw the radical individuality of actors directly into contact with an immediately political set of effects. Using this account, we can see how contemporary Kierkegaard scholarship has begun to move in similar directions to certain branches of Deleuze scholarship, by emphasising the collective dimensions of individual subjectivity, and therefore opening new possibilities for political engagement through the activity and creativity of individuals.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×