Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory

Michael James Bennett is Faculty Fellow in the Humanities at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics: The Image of Nature (Bloomsbury 2017) and writes on the intersections between twentieth-century continental thought, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of biology. Tano Posteraro is SSHRC Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Concordia University. He is co-editor, with Michael Bennett, of Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and author of a number of articles and chapters on biological themes in Bergson, Whitehead, Ruyer and Deleuze.

Packed with searching and detailed analyses, this volume brings the study of Deleuze’s relations with biology — that on which he relied, but also contemporary developments — into its maturity. From Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire to Darwin, Ruyer, Oyama, and many others, from genomics to epigenetics and beyond, the book’s breadth provides constant provocations to thought.

• Introduction: Historical Formations and Organic FormsMichael James Bennett and Tano Posteraro 1. Unnatural NuptialsBarry Allen2. The Egg: Deleuze between Darwin and RuyerJon Roffe3. Framing Sexual Selection: Elizabeth Grosz’s work on Deleuze, Darwin and FeminismErin Hortle and Hannah Stark4. Deleuze, Developmental Systems Theory, and the Philosophy of Nature Michael James Bennett5. Deterritorialisation and Creative Involution: A Note on Guattari and DeleuzePaul-Antoine Miquel6. Hydrosocial Becomings: Evolutionary Perspectives on Water Assemblages and Maya KingshipJohan Normark7. Against Social Evolution: Deleuze and Guattari’s Social TopologyDaniel W. Smith8. Epigenesis and the OutsideClaire Colebrook