Political Physics: Deleuze, Derrida and the Body Politic

by John Protevi

Political Physics analyses the work of two of the most influential thinkers of our time - Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. The book takes the reader on a transversal journey, crossing the boundaries of philosophy and science. Political Physics explores the limits and strengths of Derridean and Deleuzean philosophical approaches. Focussing on their differing approaches to the question of the 'body politic' - in all its registers, from the physical-chemical body, to the economic, the social and the political body - the book reveals a profound difference in ontological commitment. The book argues that the straightforward materialism of Deleuzean philosophy can operate across the range of analysis whereas Derridean deconstruction effectively operates at the level of reason, consciousness and culture. Cross-cutting a Derridean analysis of the history of philosophy with a Deleuzian approach to creative dialogue and complexity theory, Political Physics illuminates the value of both approaches to the analysis of contemporary culture, politics and science and to the rereading of the history of ideas.

Genres: Philosophy

Paperback

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

John Protevi is Professor of French Studies and Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University. His research focuses on the intersections of dynamical systems theory; the cognitive, life, and earth sciences; and contemporary French philosophy.

Reviews

[Abdullah Başaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

The chapter on AIDS is a big digression, though it sounds like a case study based on Derrida's critique of hylomorphism. Other than that, the work is highly approvable in terms of raising a new voice in political philosophy with a detailed discussion in physics related to metaphysics.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the burgeoning field of Deleuze studies, John Protevi surely stands as one of the most insightful, interesting, and creative scholars we have today. Operating at the complex edge of both science and philosophy, Protevi has for a long time been an inspiration for those who seek to extend the frontiers of philosophy into spaces only barely glimpsed by the rest of us. Political Physics, however, marks something like the beginning of Protevi’s apprenticeship in the Deleuzian universe, more a reconnaissance mission for future endeavours than an enterprise in its own regard. While perhaps unfair to say this with the benefit of hindsight (Protevi’s Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences is up there among the best studies of Deleuze available), having acquired a taste for the finer things, it’s hard to go back. In any case, Political Physics isn’t quite the book it’s billed as. Deleuze, in fact, hardly makes an appearance, and while he clearly motivates the direction of the book, it’s rather the work of Jacques Derrida who actually underwrites many of the investigations within.

Indeed, there’s a sense that Political Physics marks something like Protevi’s attempt to ‘awake from his Derridian slumber’ as it were, exploring the outer limits of deconstructive inquiry in order to broach the borders of the Deleuzian philosophy that he will go on to so brilliantly explicate in his later works. To be fair, this isn’t too far from Protevi’s avowed aim. As he writes, although Derrida “performs the labour necessary to shake free of millennia of philosophical idealism”, it’s only Deleuze who provides the philosophical resources necessary to conduct a material analysis of the forces that so define the worlds we occupy. Yet despite half the book being written under the banner of Deleuze, the study remains largely mired in a series of ground-clearing operations that do more to circumscribe the space in which Deleuze ought to appear, rather than depict him in his own right.

In fact, it is nothing less than the age old trope of hylomorphism which ultimately defines the focus of the book, with Protevi carefully tracing the way in which philosophy from Plato to Heidegger has continually tended to construe matter (húlē, in the Greek) as the passive receptacle upon which From (morphḗ) would impose itself as if from on high, lending order and rule to what would otherwise be an an-archic mess. While much has been written on the dilemmas of hylomorphic thought elsewhere, what sets Protevi's work apart is his close attention to the political valence that resonates through notions like 'rule', 'order' and 'law'. The argument, briefly, is that every hylomorphic schema ends up producing what Protevi refers to as a certain 'body politic': an organisation of bodies (social bodies, chemical bodies, civic bodies...) whose constituting principles run across both physical and political lines and whose contours can be tracked by - what else? - a political physics.

What interests Protevi in particular is the way in which such hylomorphic principles of production end up obscuring the self-ordering, productive capacities of matter itself, closing down avenues of both political and philosophical exploration while at the same time entrenching age old prejudices about the mundanity of bodies and the supremacy of thought. Rather than give credence to the artisanal sensibility of the laborer - whose skill at coaxing fourth material potentials requires no reference to a transcendent notion of Form - what is valourized instead is the 'eidetic vision' of the architect, whose commands and directives consistently attempt to overcome the 'recalcitrance' of matter. It's interesting stuff so far as it goes, but disappointingly, Protevi never really does anything to flesh out the alternative vision of material self-organization which orients the trajectory of the book. Would tack on another half star if possible.