Deleuze's Foucault - by Christopher Penfield (Hardcover)

About the Book

How does Deleuze's study of Foucault challenge and deepen our understanding of both philosophers' thought?

Book Synopsis

Christopher Penfield illuminates the philosophical encounter between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, developing the first systematic treatment of Deleuze's book Foucault, originally published in 1986. Using the full spectrum of Foucault's primary texts, as well as new insights and analysis from Deleuze's recently translated and published seminars on Foucault, Penfield identifies and elaborates the two thinkers' shared philosophy of force as the novel conceptual framework of 'virtual force ontology.'

For the field of Foucault studies, where Foucault still meets with misunderstanding, Penfield clarifies and motivates the demanding, highly abstract portrait of Foucault that Deleuze offers; and in demonstrating Deleuze's philosophical reconstruction, unlocks unrealized aspects of Foucault's thought.

For students as well as scholars of Deleuze, Penfield establishes the unique place and importance of Foucault in Deleuze's oeuvre, illuminating the fundamental impact of Foucault on Deleuze and the 'common cause' (Deleuze) that shaped the course of their mutually transformative philosophical relationship.

Review Quotes

This is a careful nuanced analysis of one of the most productive intellectual friendships in the history of Western philosophy, between Foucault and his exploration of the relations between power and knowledge and Deleuze and his understanding of the transversal and marginal lines of flight that cross these relations. Christopher Penfield shows the creative force and future potential of these conceptual encounters and the profound and utterly original questions they raise that may enable new ways of thinking and living to be created.--Elizabeth Grosz, Duke University