Butler Subverts Deleuze

The Hegelian Logic of the Concept as Logic of Multiplicities

Abstract

In his relation with the history of philosophy, Deleuze seeks to move away from the canonical readings of the great thinkers through a series of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that refer to a practice of immanent subversion of the texts. Imitating this procedure, this article tries to subvert Deleuze himself through Judith Butler’s reading of the hegelian dialectic since the late 1990s. For this purpose, we use the concept of multiplicity with which Deleuze defines philosophy. Our hypothesis is that Hegel is also a philosopher of multiplicity and that his logic of the concept can be interpreted, from a Butlerian perspective, as a logic of multiplicities. We distinguish the multiplicity (Mannigfaltigkeit) from the plurality (Vielheit) of being, but mainly from the diversity (Verschiedenheit) of the essence. We thus conclude that Hegelian negativity is not reduced to opposition and contradiction, as Deleuze insists, but that the concept has an ek-static movement that refers to an infinite fold and that already anticipates the Nietzschean affirmation