Abstract

Continental post-structuralism has problematized the foundations of philosophical and political thought. Diverse American authors have embraced this movement as the inauguration of a post-Philosophical culture where philosophical claims and political judgements admit no justification and rest on no foundation. This problematic, however, settles too easily into a new opposition that obscures the real possibilities afforded by contemporary Continental theory. If we look closely at the historical development of post-structuralist thought, however, at the complex social and theoretical pressures it encountered and the tools it constructed to face them, we can recapture some of its critical and constructive powers. The roots of post-structuralism and its unifying basis lie in a general opposition not to the philosophical tradition tout court but specifically to the Hegelian tradition. Gilles Deleuze's early writings offer an exemplary philosophical critique of the dialectic; Antonio Negri's work complements this with a political critique of Hegelianism. However, Deleuze and Negri not only critique the Hegelian foundation but also outline an alternative terrain and alternative lineages for theory. In this dissertation, we trace their development of this terrain through their readings of canonical figures such as Spinoza, Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin and Bergson. We turn to Deleuze and Negri, then, in order to investigate the proposals of a new problematic for research after the post-structuralist rupture, to test our footing on a terrain where new foundations of philosophical and political thought are possible