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Recent political theory has shifted decidedly towards ontology, the 'science of being', and thus towards examining fundamental concepts of identity, difference, space, and time. This new focus has reinvigorated questions concerning the nature of power, meaning, truth and agency, inspiring novel approaches to individual and collective subjectivity, the emergence of political events and the relationship between desire and politics. In this new study, Nathan Widder shows how Deleuze's philosophy both inspires and presses beyond political theory's 'ontological turn'. Linking his thought to current political theory debates, Widder explains how Deleuze's philosophy and ontology of difference are cashed out through a micropolitics of creative and critical experimentation. He further demonstrates how Deleuze challenges ideas of identity and the subject that still dominate both political thought and practice today. Connecting Deleuze to key figures in both classical and contemporary political philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel, Nietzsche, Lacan, and Foucault, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in political theory, philosophy, and related disciplines, looking to engage the emerging field of Deleuze studies.

"Explores the nature of time and its implications for questions of politics, ethics, and the self. Shows how a conception of time that breaks with common sense notions of chronological order can help us rethink the understandings of identity, difference, power, resistance, and overcoming"--Provided by publisher

This article aims to elaborate a concept of the drives that can suitably underpin an ontology and micropolitics of the self. Proceeding by way of engagements with Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault and Deleuze in particular, it argues that the idea of the drives should be seen to offer an account of the sense, rather than the truth, of the self and the world it encounters. The thesis of the drives opens up a domain of difference that is impersonal and nonsubjective, and as such has drawn criticisms that it does away with both the subject and the space of the political. Against this, the article maintains that this domain is the site of a micropolitics that serves as the guarantor of the possibility of political transformation by the way it impacts on the domain of political subjectivity. ; Este artículo pretende elaborar un concepto de las pulsiones capaz de apuntalar adecuadamente una ontología y una micropolítica del yo [self]. A través de aproximaciones a Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault y Deleuze en particular, defiende la idea de que las pulsiones dan cuenta del sentido, más que de la verdad, del yo y del mundo con que se encuentra. La tesis de las pulsiones abre un dominio de diferencia que es impersonal y no-subjetivo, y, en cuanto tal, ha recibido críticas que la acusan de eliminar tanto el sujeto cuanto el espacio de lo político. Contra esta perspectiva, el presente artículo sostiene que este dominio es la sede de una micropolítica que sirve como garante de la posibilidad de una transformación política mediante su impacto en el dominio de la subjetividad política.

Sovereignty may be most explicitly and prominently associated with space, but it has always had a no less important relationship to time. This becomes clear when we move beyond the narrow idea of sovereignty as the supreme power extended over a territory -- a view that often further assumes this power's immediate and ever-present force -- and consider notions of (moral) legitimacy, legality, obedience and obligation with which it is also associated. A distinctly temporal dimension to sovereignty's founding and persistence emerges in both classical accounts such as Locke's, for whom a past act of express or tacit consent obliges present and future obedience to the government, and more recent accounts such as Derrida's, for whom the declaration that establishes sovereign institutions retroactively invokes the prior identity and authority of a people that did not actually exist before the declaration itself (see Derrida (1986) and Locke (1989), Second Treatise, [section]119). It is the temporal side of sovereignty that I will explore in my contribution to this critical exchange. Adapted from the source document.

A book review of Farhang Erfani, Aesthetics of Autonomy: Ricoeur and Sartre on Emancipation, Authenticity, and Selfhood (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).

A review essay on books by (1) Stephen Eric Bonner, Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement (New York: Columbia U Press, 2004); (2) Ira Katznelson, Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism and the Holocaust (New York: Columbia U Press, 2003); (3) Katherine Labio, Origins and the Enlightenment: Aesthetic Epistemology from Descartes to Kant (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 2004); & (4) David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Durham, NC: Duke U Press, 2004).