Uncertain Ontologies

Authors

  • Dianna Taylor John Carroll University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i17.4256

Keywords:

Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Ontology, Ethics, Politics

Abstract

This following essay explores the meaning and implications of philosophical critique and creativity within the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault.  The two philosophers’ appeals to ontology, as an important site upon which their ethico-political commitments to critique and creativity simultaneously converge and diverge, frame this exploration.  The first part of the essay shows how Deleuze’s and Foucault’s respective ontologies further critique and creativity.  The second part of the essay focuses on a point of divergence in the two thinkers’ appeals to ontology: the relationship between philosophy and history.  From a Foucauldian perspective, the ahistorical character of Deleuze’s ontology of difference threatens to undermine its transformative potential, whereas from a Deleuzian perspective, the historical character of Foucault’s ontology of the present, while it may not undermine transformation, certainly does not facilitate it.  In conclusion, I argue that it is precisely from within these tensions that important, productive, and transformative aspects of Deleuze’s and Foucault’s work emerge.

Author Biography

Dianna Taylor, John Carroll University

Dianna Taylor is Associate Professor of Philosophy and the current Shula Chair in Philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. She has co-edited two volumes of essays, Feminism and the Final Foucault (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Feminist Politics: Identity, Difference, Agency (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), and is the sole editor of Michel Foucault: Key Concepts (Acumen Publishers, 2010).

Her current research draws upon Foucault’s work in order to explore new ways of conceptualizing and countering sexual violence against women.

Number 17: April 2014: Foucault and Deleuze

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Published

2014-04-30

How to Cite

Taylor, D. (2014). Uncertain Ontologies. Foucault Studies, (17), 117–133. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i17.4256

Issue

Number 17: April 2014: Foucault and Deleuze

Section

Special Issue on Foucault and Deleuze

License

Authors retain copyright to their work, but assign the right of the first publication to Foucault Studies. The work is subject to a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, but despite these restrictions, authors can take for granted that Foucault Studies will permit articles published in Foucault Studies to be translated or reprinted in another format such as a book providing a full reference is made to Foucault Studies as the original place of publication.