Deleuzian Interrogations: A Conversation
with Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi and
Torkild Thanem
……
This conversation explores some of the connections between Deleuzian
philosophy, organization theory and work by DeLanda and Protevi, and it
springs out of questions initially posed by Torkild Thanem to DeLanda and
Protevi as well as questions posed by Protevi to DeLanda. Working through
these connections carries some sense of tension. Deleuzian philosophy is a fairly
recent arrivant on the scene of organization theory. Moreover, both DeLanda
and Protevi are outsiders to organization theory, and they both “in their own
distinctive ways” critically rethink and reconstruct Deleuzian philosophy. But
sometimes tension stimulates creativity.

Thanem: Deleuze’s writings (and especially his work with Guattari) remains
marginalized within philosophy proper. What kinds of questions does Deleuzian
thinking enable philosophers to address?
Protevi: First of all, Torkild, let me say I’m very pleased to be asked by Tamara
to partake in this conversation, especially as it includes Manuel DeLanda, from
whose work I’ve learned so much.
DeLanda: Thanks, John. It is rewarding to know I am having some influence on
your generation. As for the question, Deleuze’s main contribution to philosophy,
it seems to me, is to have rescued realism (as an ontological stance) from the
oblivion in which it has been for a century or more. In some philosophical circles
to say that the world exists independently of our minds is tantamount to a capital
crime. Non-realist philosophers (from positivists to phenomenologists) have
created a straw man to kick around: the naive realist, who thinks we have
unmediated access to the external world and who holds a correspondence theory
of truth. So the key move here was to create a viable alternative form of realism
to deprive non-realists of that easy way out. Similarly, when it comes to defend
the autonomy of non-human entities (atoms, molecules, cells, species) the crucial
manoeuvre is to account for their mind-independent identity without bringing
essences into the picture. To take the most obvious example, the real identity of a
hydrogen atom is usually treated by realists (like Bhaskar, for example) as
founded in the possession of an essence, having one proton in its nucleus, given
that if we add another proton it loses its identity and becomes helium. Deleuze’s
process ontology, however, cannot afford to do that. The identity of any real
entity must be accounted for by a process, the process that produced that entity,
in this case, the “manufacturing” processes within stars where hydrogen and
other atoms are produced. When it comes to social science the idea is the same:
families, institutional organizations, cities, nation states are all real entities that are
the product of specific historical processes and whatever degree of identity they
have it must be accounted for via the processes which created them and those
that maintain them.

Protevi: The question of realism is indeed an important one for philosophers to
debate. I wonder if Manuel would like to say something about how he sees the relation

between realism and materialism, since Deleuze and Guattari tend to use
the latter term to describe their work rather than realism?

DeLanda: Well, I cannot imagine a materialist philosophy which is not also realist.
On the other hand, someone who believes that god and the devil exist
independently of our minds is also a realist but clearly not a materialist. The only
problem with the term “materialism” is that not only matter but also energy and
physical information are needed to account for self-organizing phenomena and
the processes which fabricate physical entities. Also, some forms of materialism
may imply reductionism (of the mind to matter, for example) and that is not at all
implied by the term “realism”.
Protevi: Good. I’d certainly agree that fitting materialism into the contrast of
realism and idealism is important. I’d also say that while materialism is often
contrasted with idealism, you could also say that the foil for Deleuze and
Guattari’s materialism is dualism, specifically a spiritualist dualism. So their
materialism is a monism (another way of putting this is to say they demand
immanence rather than transcendence). Spiritualist dualisms have, because of an
impoverished concept of matter as chaotic or passive, too hastily had recourse to
a “hylomorphic” schema in which an organized transcendent agent is
responsible for all production. The problem is how to account for the ordered
and creative nature of bodies and assemblages, for if matter is chaotic, it can’t
account for order, but if it’s passive, it can’t account for creativity. Deleuze and
Guattari’s materialism avoids the forced choice of matter’s chaos or spirit’s
transcendent ordering by calling attention to the self-ordering potentials of matter
itself, as outlined in the researches of complexity theory (as Manuel point out
above, you have expand the sense of “matter” to include the energy and
information of “material systems”). Deleuze and Guattari can thus account for
order and creativity in the world without the heavy ontological price of a dualism
or the unacceptable phenomenal price of the denial of creativity as illusory, as in
“God’s eye view” spiritualist transcendent determinism.
Thanem: During the past decade or so the philosophical thought of Deleuze and
his joint work with Guattari has become increasingly noticed by non-philosophers
across the humanities and social sciences, a trend exemplified by this special issue

of a management journal on Deleuze and Organization Theory. As Deleuze
commentators who may be seen to inhabit the margins of philosophy, how
would you like to comment on the spread of Deleuzian philosophy outside
philosophy?
Protevi: I’m all for it! And I’m sure Deleuze and Guattari would be pleased too,
given their insistence on the “toolbox” character of their work together. Just on
a personal level, working on Deleuze in a French Studies department has freed
me up in many ways, and I suspect my experience is not uncommon in this
regard. First of all, I?m free of the moribund but still powerful ?analytic vs.
continental? philosophy split at a couple of levels. In the micropolitics of North
American philosophy departments someone working on Deleuze is seen as a
“continental” philosopher and so is lumped together with phenomenologists and
post-phenomenologists (Heideggerians, Levinasians, Derrideans, etc.) and
expected to vote with them on hiring and tenure decisions, curriculum
construction, examination questions, and all the daily politics that go on in
academic departments. Being free of all that, and hence free to pursue the
Deleuze and science connection, I find myself actually having more in common
with the “analytic” philosophers in the Philosophy Department of my school.
(There is a deeply entrenched suspicion of science on the part of many
phenomenologists and post-phenomenologists, which is verbally expressed along
the lines of the Heideggerian mantra “science doesn’t think”, but which I suspect
is also tied in with the trauma of the McCarthy era purges in American
philosophy departments, as detailed in John McCumber’s Time in the Ditch.) As
Manuel’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, which is largely addressed
to analytic philosophers, shows, the time has come for us to redraw the map of
philosophy along realist vs. anti-realist lines instead of “continental vs. analytic”.
Christopher Norris has been arguing for this for some time now in fact.
DeLanda: Although I have never done any serious study of the propagation of
Deleuzian thought, in my own experience his ideas have had no influence
whatsoever outside literary criticism and cultural studies departments. Since these
two fields are dominated by non-realists (social constructivists, idealists, postmodern
semioticians and so on) it follows that they probably have no real
understanding of Deleuze. For many years the only book of his these people read

was management journal on Deleuze and Organization Theory. As Deleuze
commentators who may be seen to inhabit the margins of philosophy, how
would you like to comment on the spread of Deleuzian philosophy outside
philosophy?

Protevi: I’m all for it! And I’m sure Deleuze and Guattari would be pleased too,
given their insistence on the “toolbox” character of their work together. Just on
a personal level, working on Deleuze in a French Studies department has freed
me up in many ways, and I suspect my experience is not uncommon in this
regard. First of all, I?m free of the moribund but still powerful ?analytic vs.
continental? philosophy split at a couple of levels. In the micropolitics of North
American philosophy departments someone working on Deleuze is seen as a
“continental” philosopher and so is lumped together with phenomenologists and
post-phenomenologists (Heideggerians, Levinasians, Derrideans, etc.) and
expected to vote with them on hiring and tenure decisions, curriculum
construction, examination questions, and all the daily politics that go on in
academic departments. Being free of all that, and hence free to pursue the
Deleuze and science connection, I find myself actually having more in common
with the “analytic” philosophers in the Philosophy Department of my school.
(There is a deeply entrenched suspicion of science on the part of many
phenomenologists and post-phenomenologists, which is verbally expressed along
the lines of the Heideggerian mantra “science doesn’t think”, but which I suspect
is also tied in with the trauma of the McCarthy era purges in American
philosophy departments, as detailed in John McCumber’s Time in the Ditch.) As
Manuel’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, which is largely addressed
to analytic philosophers, shows, the time has come for us to redraw the map of
philosophy along realist vs. anti-realist lines instead of “continental vs. analytic”.
Christopher Norris has been arguing for this for some time now in fact.

DeLanda: Although I have never done any serious study of the propagation of
Deleuzian thought, in my own experience his ideas have had no influence
whatsoever outside literary criticism and cultural studies departments. Since these
two fields are dominated by non-realists (social constructivists, idealists, postmodern
semioticians and so on) it follows that they probably have no real
understanding of Deleuze. For many years the only book of his these people read several levels of emergence is crucial.

Protevi: Yes, “emergence” is the biggest question in social science
(methodological individualism, structure/agency, Luhmann’s differentiation of
social structures, and so on). You could say that Deleuze and Guattari bring a
political dimension to bear in their encounter with complexity theory so that they
thematize the question of emergence above the subject to the level of social
(tribal, gang, institutional, urban, State) machines. (Actually, here Manuel’s work
is indispensable, as Deleuze and Guattari themselves tend to jump straight to the
“socius”, which would mean the “State” level in analysing “capitalism”). But
they also show the importance of complementing the move above the subject
with one moving “below” the subject to a multiplicity of “agents” (a move
known in cognitive science as the “society of mind” thesis). Deleuze and
Guattari enable us to connect the two moves, above and below the subject. Here
the question of emergence as the constraint of lower level components and the
concomitant enabling of system level behaviour comes to the fore.

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