Challenging Peace: Deleuze, Guattari, and the Republican Legacy

Résumé 0

In my presentation, I aim to explore Deleuze and Guattari's reflections on the idea of peace and their relation to older arguments from the ancient republican tradition, as well as to authors of German idealism who incorporate elements of this tradition, particularly Hegel. I will demonstrate that Deleuze and Guattari's critique of peace both echoes and transforms these arguments through their concept of the "realization of the war machine" as a strategy of non-domination in primitivism and barbarism, as well as through their association of peace with notions such as despotism and terror. However, their departure from this tradition lies in their rejection of the accompanying arguments for war, as they seek to circumvent the opposition between war and peace altogether through the concept of the "war machine." Finally, I will question the extent to which such a theoretical position retains political relevance in today's landscape, where the contemporary nature of technological war renders the old republican arguments for war utterly obsolete-irrespective of any moral critique one might level against them while simultaneously framing peace as a political ultimatum.