Yes, Gilles Deleuze had a significant but complex influence on Giorgio Agamben. While Agamben engages with Deleuze’s thought, his response is often critical or reconfigurative rather than purely affirmative. Deleuze’s influence on Agamben can be traced through several key philosophical intersections:
1. Potentiality vs. Virtuality
Deleuze’s Virtuality (Bergson-Spinoza Influence)
Deleuze, drawing from Henri Bergson and Spinoza, develops the concept of the virtual as a field of real but non-actualized potentialities that can be actualized in different ways.
For Deleuze, the virtual is productive - it is not mere possibility but an active, generative force that produces new realities (Difference and Repetition, The Fold).
Agamben’s Potentiality (Aristotle-Heidegger Influence)
Agamben’s potentiality (from Homo Sacer and The Coming Community) is not a field of productivity but of suspension. He takes Aristotle’s dynamis (potentiality) and argues that true power lies not in actualization but in retaining the ability “not to” actualize.
This is a fundamental departure from Deleuze: while Deleuze’s virtuality is affirmative and generative, Agamben’s potentiality is defined by an inoperativity (inoperosit), a suspension of action.
Deleuze’s virtuality is a creative field of possibilities.
Agamben rejects this, focusing on potentiality as the ability to not act.
2. The State of Exception vs. Deleuzian Control Society
Deleuze’s Control Society (Foucault Influence)
In Postscript on Control Societies, Deleuze extends Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary societies, arguing that modern power no longer operates through rigid institutions but through continuous modulation and control (e.g., financial systems, digital surveillance).
Control societies do not suspend law but expand it indefinitely - power is decentralized and fluid.
Agamben’s State of Exception (Schmitt-Heidegger Influence)
Agamben, by contrast, focuses on Carl Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty and argues that modern power functions by suspending law through the state of exception (Homo Sacer).
For Agamben, power doesn’s just expand - it excludes, creating zones where law is suspended (e.g., refugee camps, Guantanamo Bay).
While Deleuze sees power as diffused and constantly adjusting, Agamben sees it as concentrated in sovereign decisions.
Deleuze’s control society operates through flexibility and modulation.
Agamben sees power as still relying on sovereign exclusion and exception.
3. Bare Life vs. Deleuze’s Life
Deleuze’s Affirmative Life (Spinozist Vitalism)
Deleuze, influenced by Spinoza and Nietzsche, embraces life as a creative force (pure immanence).
In Immanence: A Life, Deleuze describes life as a field of potential transformation, affirming becoming and new forms of subjectivity.
Agamben’s Bare Life (Schmitt-Heidegger Influence)
Agamben’s bare life (homo sacer) is not vitalist but rather a form of life reduced to pure existence without political agency.
He focuses on how modern power structures strip life of meaning, creating zones of abandonment (e.g., concentration camps, refugee camps).
Deleuze’s life is affirmative and transformative.
Agamben’s bare life is excluded and reduced.
4. Deleuze’s Deterritorialization vs. Agamben’s Messianism
Deleuze’s Deterritorialization (Nomadology)
Deleuze (with Guattari) introduces deterritorialization - a way in which life and identity escape fixed structures.
In A Thousand Plateaus, deterritorialization creates new possibilities for subjectivity and resistance.
Agamben’s Messianic Time (Pauline Influence)
Agamben prefers messianism, particularly from Pauline Christianity, where redemption does not create a new world but suspends the current one.
He introduces “form-of-life” - a mode of existence outside sovereign control.
Instead of escaping structures (Deleuzian deterritorialization), Agamben sees suspending law as the only way to escape power.
Deleuze’s deterritorialization creates new subjectivities.
Agamben’s messianism seeks suspension rather than new formations.
5. Deleuze’s Machines vs. Agamben’s Destituent Power
Deleuze’s Machines (Assemblage Theory)
Deleuze (with Guattari) sees power operating through assemblages and machines, constantly shifting relationships between forces.
Machines do not have fixed essences; they are dynamic and always in flux.
Agamben’s Destituent Power (Negation Instead of Creation)
Agamben moves toward destituent power, arguing that instead of creating new structures (as Deleuze might propose), we should focus on rendering the existing system inoperative.
Instead of escaping systems (as Deleuze’s assemblages do), Agamben wants to neutralize power through inactivity.
Deleuze’s machines are active, assembling new connections.
Agamben seeks to deactivate and render structures useless.
Conclusion: A Complex Relationship
1. Agamben is deeply influenced by Deleuze but ultimately rejects Deleuze’s vitalism and affirmative ontology.
2. Where Deleuze sees escape, movement, and deterritorialization, Agamben focuses on suspension, destitution, and inoperativity.
3. Deleuze’s philosophy is about becoming and transformation, while Agamben’s is about stopping and suspending power.
Thus, Agamben’s work can be seen as a counterpoint to Deleuze- drawing on similar concerns but reaching opposite conclusions. Instead of multiplicity, fluidity, and deterritorialization, Agamben seeks potentiality, suspension, and the messianic end of politics.
