Communism After Deleuze
By (Author) Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
6th February 2025
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Political science and theory
Political ideologies and movements
Hardback
232
Width 138mm, Height 216mm
This new reading of Gilles Deleuze forges a link between his early and later works by decoding his hidden agenda for communism. Encoded in the idea of the Third World, Deleuze used his concept of communism as a bulwark against fascist politics and the liberal political economy. Inspired by May 68 and its aftermath, these concealed interpretations of Marx are now tacitly forgotten but can unlock a deeper understanding of Deleuzes political project. Often regarded as an apolitical philosopher, the challenges that Deleuze mounted to structuralism are easy to overlook. By reinvigorating the communist aspect of his political project and linking his ideas to Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancire and Slavoj iek, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee reveals Deleuzes objective: to rescue Marxism from the dogmatic status quo and revive its political agendas. This major undertaking situates his ideas alongside and sets out a new framework for reading the significance of Marxist thought in postwar France. Ultimately, this new understanding of Deleuzes critique of global capitalism opens up his vision of materialistic politics as a means of shaping the people and the proletariat of the future.
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is a professor of cultural studies at the School of Global Communication and a founding director of the Center for Technology in Humanities at Kyung Hee University, Korea.