Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Steph Butera

Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Philosophy

Committee Chair

James Bahoh

Committee Member

Daniel Smith

Committee Member

Mary Beth Mader

Committee Member

Peter Hallward

Abstract

This dissertation provides a study and critical analysis of the theoretical context and contributions of the ontologies of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and Alain Badiou (1937-present). I focus on how these systems’ accounts of the “event” reprise some fundamental features of Hegel’s dialectical logic despite aiming to radically circumvent them. “Event” here refers to an instance in which novelty emerges, novelty that is irreducible to the previous conditions governing the domain of its emergence. I argue that important aspects of Deleuze and Badiou’s “poststructural” ontologies developed out of a conflict in French theory between two ways of conceptualizing the role of contradiction in explaining change: G.W.F. Hegel’s (1770-1831) dialectical logic, on the one hand, and various versions of structuralist methodology inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857-1913) theory of linguistics, on the other. My study of this context explains ways structuralism addresses potential problems with dialectical logic. This study enables me to demonstrate ways Deleuze and Badiou build their systems by reckoning with these predecessor theoretical trajectories. I use Louis Althusser (1918-1990)’s attempt to overcome dialectics and structuralism, “The Underground Current of the Materialism of the Encounter,” to frame the emergence of Deleuze and Badiou’s ontologies of events. Althusser’s work is informative for framing this emergence because it emphasizes a problem with dialectics and structuralism essential to the theme of the event: namely, that the ways both these methodologies conceive contradiction overlook the actual encounter involved in the process of change. Deleuze and Badiou each attempt to rectify this issue in their ontologies of events. However, on the basis of my exegesis of these ontologies, I suggest that they nonetheless harbor unacknowledged aspects of Hegelian dialectical logic that systematically burden the integrity of their explanatory power.

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Embargoed until 04-10-2027

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Available for download on Saturday, April 10, 2027

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