Hegel, Deleuze/Guattari and Political Immanence: The Sons of Rousseau

Abstract

In the article I argue that Hegel and Deleuze/Guattari construct two distinct political paths toward immanence. Both of these paths have as their starting point Rousseau’s bourgeois. I show that both thinkers follow Rousseau in his attempt to construct political immanence and abandon the position of private man. However, in doing so they move in opposite directions. Hegel seeks to convert the bourgeois into the citizen, with the intention of reformulating the immanence of state-life presented in the The Social Contract by extending mutual recognition a distinct space in the form of civil society. In contrast Deleuze/Guattari move in the direction of becoming-animal along the lines of the Discourse on Inequality, by reformulating the relationship between life and society. At the same time, I argue that the overcoming of the problems that Hegel and Deleuze/Guattari identified in Rousseau introduces new ones and that the dangers inherent in the project of immanence cannot disappear.