Returning to Revolution – Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri were quick to cast the Occupy movement as an expression of their own concept of ‘“multitude form” . . . characterized by frequent assemblies and participatory decision-making structures’. But where did Hardt and Negri get this concept from in the first place? Just as the practical origins of Occupy lie deeper than the alter-globalization movement, so its theoretical origins lie deeper as well. It has already been recognized that Deleuze and Guattari’s work holds special promise in the development of a new philosophy of revolution that can revitalize contemporary political thought. Slavoj Žižek, in particular, has gone as far as to say that ‘Deleuze more and more serves as the theoretical foundation of today’s anti-global  Left’. But Deleuze and Guattari’s work has moved to the center of the debate primarily due to the success of Hardt and Negri’s political trilogy Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth, which takes Deleuze and Guattari’s work as one of its primary philosophical touchstones. It is to Deleuze and Guattari that Hardt and Negri turn for their philosophical account of how the singularities of the multitude can be sustained in a lasting revolutionary movement.

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