Deleuze's Philosophy of Law

Laurent de Sutter is Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He is the author of more than twenty books translated into a dozen languages. In English, he is the author of Narcocapitalism: Life in the Age of Anaesthesia (Polity, 2017) and After Law (Polity, 2020, French Voices Award, Leopold Rosy Prize of the Belgian Royal Academy). He is the editor of the Theory Redux series at Polity Press and of Perspectives Critiques at Presses Universitaires de France. Nils F. Schott is an academic translator and editor. With Alexandre Lefebvre, he is the co-editor of three books: Henri Bergson’s lectures on Freedom at the Collège de France (Bloomsbury, 2024); a collection of essays, Interpreting Bergson: Critical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2019); and a translation of Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Henri Bergson (Duke University Press, 2015). With Hent de Vries, he edited Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World (Columbia University Press, 2015). He has translated more than twenty books in philosophy and related fields, including, for Edinburgh University Press, Deleuze's Philosophy of Law by Laurent de Sutter.

• Preface to the English EditionReconstructionUseSystemTraditionCoherenceLanguageIntroductionPhilosophyLawProblemAlternativeLiteralnessBetrayal1. CritiqueThesis ITaxonomyPlatoSocratesKant IKant IIFreudSade ISade IIOstSacher-Masoch ISacher-Masoch IILacanKant IIIIrony IIrony IIHumour IHumour IISatireKafka IKafka IIKafka IIIKafka IVKafka VCacciariBartleby IBartleby IIBartleby IIIAgambenZourabichviliExfoliation, invaginationCritique ICritique IIThe LawDaddy–MommyYoung girls2. ClinicThesis IIDisciplineControlCrisisClinicAxiomaticsCodeProblemLegalismInterventionDiagramNaturalism INaturalism IISubventionTardeCompositionConsensualismConventionPropertyInstitutionalismInventionLegislationPracticeLogosNomosSchmittLawTopicAssociationCase ICase IIJurisprudencePrinciplesLeibnizRomeExistenceConclusionPersonaeJudgementErrorsContinuationsPoliticsDeceptionAppendices1. The Young Girls in Deleuze’s Philosophy of LawPrecursorSurfaceInteriorityPerturbationDisturbanceTekhnēObscenityPhantasm IPhantasm IIViewerImageOutsidePhilosophyPornologyTheorems2. On Some Interpretations of Deleuze’s Philosophy of LawHabitBoundas IBoundas IIPoliticsLefebvre ILefebvre IIMussawir IMussawir IIBibliographyIndex

Is this the book Deleuze would have written had he followed his fantasy of doing law instead of philosophy? Perhaps. In any case, the book written by de Sutter is an infinitely inviting book: it is a slow whispering between two thinkers, a communion of minds and words into which we are called to eavesdrop. It is critical (of law, of the world) and clinical (pragmatic, forensic, focussed) at the same time, performatively showing how critique of law is the necessary condition to engage with law. Through bite-size, delectably pithy, nearly twitterable chapters, de Sutter offers some of the deepest and most genre-changing propositions about the law ever encountered, but uttered lightly, with irony and humour, with a levity and flippancy worthy of the law.