Discussion with Alex Taek-Gwang Lee about his new book Communism After Deleuze.
What if communism was always the secret engine of Deleuze’s thought? This episode uncovers a hidden itinerary running through Deleuze’s work: a subterranean current where the idea of the Third World becomes a cipher for revolutionary desire. Against the grain of liberal economy and creeping fascism, Deleuze's veiled engagements with Marx – sparked by the upheavals of May ’68 – point toward an unfulfilled political project. Join us as we excavate this buried legacy and explore how these forgotten pathways might still resonate, agitate, and assemble today.
More on the book: “Often regarded as an apolitical philosopher, the challenges that Deleuze mounted to structuralism are easy to overlook. By reinvigorating the communist aspect of his political project and linking his ideas to Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee reveals Deleuze's objective: to rescue Marxism from the dogmatic status quo and revive its political agendas. This major undertaking situates his ideas alongside and sets out a new framework for reading the significance of Marxist thought in postwar France. Ultimately, this new understanding of Deleuze's critique of global capitalism opens up his vision of materialistic politics as a means of shaping the people and the proletariat of the future.”
Bio: Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Communication at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea.
