Flux qua gap: The Hegelian Deleuze

Abstract

This essay aims to answer the question: how does Žižek reconcile Hegel’s immanence of gap with Deleuze’s immanence of flux? The contrast between the Deleuzian flux and the Hegelian gap is positivity versus negativity, externality versus internality, and virtuality versus actuality. Via Lacanian not-all, Žižek inserts Hegelian negativity into the absolute positivity of the Deleuzian univocity. In keeping up with Hegelian immanence without externality, Žižek encloses Deleuzian externality by regarding anti-Oedipus as the inner transgression of desire via the shift of perspective. Ending up with the subject supposed to know via retroactivities, the Deleuzian subject as desire finds an affinity with the Hegelian subject of letting-it-be. The reconciliation is mutual. Though Žižek tries to reconcile Deleuzian pure difference with self-identity, and pure repetition with self-sublation and negativity, Hegelian negativity is interpreted as the repetitive death drive, and a Hegelian coherent narration of Hegel-Kierkegaard-Freud-Deleuze is developed. What we get in the end is a Hegelian Deleuze, and Hegel as the Platonist of the virtual.