From the Impersonal to Instituting Thought: Esposito’s Departure from Deleuze

Roberto Esposito’s relationship with Deleuzian thought is long-standing. The Italian philosopher begins to engage more intensely with Gilles Deleuze as early as Bios, where the themes of the political and the community were addressed from the perspective of life. Like all enduring relationships, it undergoes a major repositioning, from an initial adherence, albeit with a consistent critical distance, to then a slow distancing, due to the Italian philosopher’s increasing attention to the role of negation. If, therefore, Esposito stands on Deleuze’s side in the texts of the first decade of the new century, from Bios (2004) to A Philosophy for Europe: From the Outside (2016), starting from Politics and Negation (2018) and then even more markedly in the analyses on the institution, the distancing from the French philosopher acquires a clear-cut delineation.