Deleuze and New Materialism

Deleuze and Guattari provide a sophisticated account of ontological relationality, many facets of which have been annexed into new materialist theory. It is worth asking how this happens and with what degree of accuracy. Deleuze’s appropriation of Spinozist univocity has been interpreted by many feminist new materialists as an endorsement of addressing all beings as ontological and moral equals and using impersonal affect as the guidepost for ethics. The question is, can relational ontologies, which downplay human exceptionalism, agency, and the relevance of human consciousness, yield an ethics or a politics? Primarily comparing their use of Spinoza to that of Braidotti’s and the differences between Barad’s idea of the mattering of meaning to their sense and concept formation, this chapter concludes that Deleuze and Guattari’s account of relational becoming does not issue in -or onto-egalitarianism but rather a pragmatics that, while challenging human exceptionalism, retains a role for human distinctiveness.