Roberto Esposito’ s Deleuzian Trend

Abstract

This work tackles Gilles Deleuze’s concepts present in Roberto Esposito’s writings. After decades of being ostracized, overlooked or even criticized by the Italian Philosophy, the French’s thought gained brand new protagonism with the birth of the Biopolitical paradigm, due to his understanding of Foucault. Toni Negri’s interpretation of Biopower from the society of control’s point of view, as well as Esposito’s elaboration of affirmative Biopolitics constitute clear examples. Esposito has increasingly recurred to Deleuze’s work for his subsequent productions to Bios on several matters: in Terza Persona he relies on his conception of event so as to support his philosophy of the impersonal; whereas in Due he brings into play the idea of “plane of immanence” to deconstruct the theological-political machine. Our aim is to analyze Esposito’s use of Deleuze’s concepts in his texts, in which he intertwines the French’s perspective with a different problematic present in the original texts. Thus, Esposito performs a fresh usage of his notions, which enables him to reformulate the addressed matters.