The Topology of Difference: Deleuze’s Nietzsche in his Politics of Folded Spaces and Subjects
Résumé
This chapter examines spatial aspects of the politics of difference by reading Nietzsche along with Foucault and Deleuze. Deleuze invokes Nietzsche with his concepts of power and force, considering them in terms of a topology of difference. Inspired by Nietzsche, Deleuze’s concept of multiplicity generates a radical form of perspectivism, a productive form of critique and an opposition to territorial originality. Focusing on the political implications of Deleuze’s understanding of spatiality, the chapter leads to a confrontation with postcolonial discourse that revolves around philosophical conceptions of space. In the 1980s, Spivak expressed strong criticisms of the underlying Eurocentrism of Deleuze’s (and Foucault’s) concepts of subjectivity, pluralism and power. By adapting this critique, this chapter argues that there is also a productive reading of Deleuze’s politics of difference, which entails a counter-narrative to an essentialised Eurocentric subject.
