This volume examines the relationship between aesthetics and politics at the forefront of the philosophies espoused by Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) and Pierre-Félix Guattari (1930–92), especially in their famous collaborative works
Anti-Oedipus
(1972) and
A Thousand Plateaus
(1980). Robert Porter analyzes the relationship between art and socio-political life, considering the ways the aesthetic and political draw from each other. Particular attention is paid to how Deleuze and Guattari, in their belief that political theory can take on aesthetic form and vice-versa, forced us to confront the fact that art always has the potential to become political, not in the least because of its ability to name and give shape to the order of our world, rather than its representation.