The Deleuzian Subject

In his earliest work, Deleuze presents a relational theory of subjectivity in constant flux. The larval, passive flux becomes an active subject capable of saying “I” through the exercise of certain capacities or faculties, namely, the habit of forming habits. Though the exercise of habit formation is passive, the result is an activated subject with the capacity to intervene in its own passive processes, capable of undertaking the difficult, transformative, and liberating work of destroying old habits of thinking and acting in favor of creating new ones that embrace fluidity, ambiguity, freedom, and difference. Yet, this capacity for catalyzing transformative change is frequently subverted from the inside. This is the ethical problem at the center of Deleuze’s ontology of change: the very habits that produce the conditions of becoming an ethical subject also produce the desire for repression of the fluidity of becoming. That is, the desire for fascism is the companion of the movement of subjectivation.