Dark Deleuze (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) appears as an anomaly in English Deleuze scholarship. Andrew Culp contrasts Deleuze as a thinker of positivity who constantly demands we find “reasons to believe in this world” with a Deleuze of dark negativity. In doing so, Culp offers an alternative Deleuze in a time where powerful forces from Buzzfeed to the IDF seek to appropriate Deleuze’s thought. The Dark Deleuze speaks of destructive negativity, hatred for this world, and the shame of being human. All of these ideas are pit against “the canon of joy” that would have us relentlessly celebrate the new, affirm the present, and give in to compulsory positivity. Culp makes a powerful case that, contrary to what one might expect, it is precisely the positivity that lies at the heart of both liberal and accelerationist readings of Deleuze.
Articles by Josef Thorne
Josef Thorne is an autodidact primarily interested in A.N Whitehead, Deleuze, and Sloterdijk.