The Idiot: Deleuze’s Nietzsche for a Politics of Difference

Following Philippe Mengue, this chapter explains the importance of the figure of the idiot in Deleuze’s philosophy. The idiot allows for a conception of resistance relevant in the context of micropolitics. It implies a peculiar notion of political action: it is not the action of a consciously engaged individual, but rather the excretion of indetermination by someone or something inane, which creates an openness and thereby allows for something different to emerge, to go its course and be affirmed. This chapter relates this Deleuzean perspective to Melville's Bartleby, to Nietzsche’s “anti-politics” and to his interpretation of Christ. It argues that Deleuze mobilises Nietzschean ideas in a transcendental way, in order to conceive of a persona that would allow for political change, which explains and justifies an “anti-political” stance.