Abstract

The relationships between collective bodies, space, and power are examined through a reading of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze that also engages with Luce Irigaray, Henri Lefebvre, Antonio Negri, Mayan pantheism, and stories from everyday life in contemporary Yucatan, Mexico. A model of the collective body is constructed, primarily from Deleuze's studies of Spinoza and Leibniz. It is used to examine the relationship between collective bodies and power through an analysis of Deleuze and Negri's studies of Spinoza. The influence of Stoic conceptions of space on Deleuze is considered to further examine the relationships between bodies, space, and power and to engage with Lefebvre. Ethical and political implications are considered by examining the work of other thinkers, such as Ayers, Bergson, Foucault, Irigaray, Lacan, and Marx. Power is considered from two perspectives: the constitution and exercise of power by collective bodies; and its transformation into the State Power of Gods and Kings. Space is considered as it is produced through the everyday life of collective bodies, and as it is set in concrete through the efforts of planners and contractors. Stories of everyday life are examined as "minor literature," which problematizes the majoritarian discourse of State Power, and to consider questions of ethics and sexual difference in everyday life. Deleuze's theory of difference is then considered in terms of Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference and Lefebvre's theory of produced difference. Sexual difference in itself is used to examine Irigaray and Deleuze's theories of alterity. The dissertation concludes that Irigaray is right that phallocratism is complicit with State Power and that no simple inversion of power can eliminate political and social oppression. Ethics, especially an ethics of sexual difference, should be primary and part of any political project. Social and political change must therefore begin by restoring power to collective bodies. But this can be done only by restoring ethical relations of sexual difference to their constitutory power, for only in this way can collective bodies become vagabond subjects that combine with other bodies to produce a space that is free and lived