Immanence and Micropolitics

Christian Gilliam is an associate lecturer in political theory at the University of Kent. He has written a selection of articles on French existentialism, political subjectivity and micropolitics.

• Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Sartre and the Instigation of Immanence 2. Merleau-Ponty and the Fold of the Flesh3. Foucault and the Force of Power-Knowledge 4. Deleuze and the Micropolitics of Desire Conclusion: From Immanence to Micropolitics Bibliography

In his deft study, Gilliam provides a lineage of French philosophy from Sartre to Deleuze that grounds a conception of immanence increasingly employed within contemporary political theory. Beginning with the way Sartre’s philosophy moved increasingly towards a kind of ontological immanence, he shows how this thought is taken further in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the flesh, Foucault’s micropower relations, and Deleuze’s concepts of disjunction, folding and desiring-production. In this way, Gilliam shows how immanence is necessarily cashed out in an understanding of politics as micropolitics.