Points of Affinity in Durkheim’s Sociology and a Deleuzian-Guattarian Ontology

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Rethinking Durkheim

Abstract

A vast gulf separates not only Durkheim’s sociology, but sociology in general from a Deleuze-Guattarian vitalist philosophy despite recent attempts at both reconciliation (Bogart 1998; Delanda 2006) and criticisms intending wholesale replacements of sociology (for example Latour 2005; Franzen 2012). However, one important link that has not been well articulated nor explored are the lines of consistency in Durkheim with latter perspectives such as post-structuralism. This paper explores such provocative links between Durkheim and contemporary social theory by examining the points of affinity that might be charted between Durkheim’s work and a Deleuze-Guattarian ontology. Specifically, I focus on two lines of affinity that cross Durkheim’s oeuvre from the earlier Suicide to the later Elementary Forms of Religious Life. First, I examine Durkheim’s concept of desire and argue that it contains an ontological commitment to a broadly constitutive perspective that is, at the ontological level, compatible with Deleuze-Guattarian one. While Deleuze and Durkheim are altogether at odds in their normative valuations of desire and its role in their respective systems – they share a broad commitment to a non-foundational and constitutive positioning of desire. I next examine the methodological assumptions that underpin Durkheim’s description of the body in a state of collective effervescence in Elementary Forms of Religious Life – in particular his description of the zero-point formation of the subject in a process of ecstatic identification as a model entirely consistent with a Deleuze-Guattarian ontology.

Author

• Paul Fuller, Illinois College