From ‘dialectical’ to ‘Machinic’: Early Laruelle’s Critique of Deconstruction

François Laruelle's Non-philosophy project is renowned for its critique of the universal principle of sufficiency in philosophy. However, introductions to Non-philosophy in the English-speaking academic world have often overlooked Laruelle's preparatory research in the 1970s, focusing too heavily on the bizarre neologisms developed in Non-philosophy from the 1980s onwards. This paper aims to address Laruelle's works from the 1970s to the early 1980s, in which he attempted to oppose the concept of ‘dialectical’ with the concept of ‘machinic’. This theme is also the key thread in his interpretations of Derrida's deconstruction. Given Laruelle's unique writing style – as Jean-Luc Nancy pointed out in an interview ( Laruelle 1977b , 245), Laruelle's texts are highly self-referential, offering fierce critiques of certain ideas without providing an overarching definition of them, and the same holds true for the concepts of ‘dialectics’ or ‘dialectical’ – this paper will first trace the use of the concepts of dialectics and dialectical materialism in post-war French thought, and will then examine early Derrida's engagement with the concept of dialectics and its influence on the project of deconstruction. Based on this intellectual background, the paper specifically explores Laruelle's critique of dialectics in the 1970s, focusing on two of his works Machines textuelles and Le Déclin de l’écriture, and discuss the profound impact of this critique on the conception of non-philosophy. The author believes that the insights presented in this paper will offer a fresh perspective for comparative studies of Deleuze and Derrida, as well as research on Laruelle's Non-philosophy.