From Tarde to Deleuze and Foucault

This book posits that a singular paradigm in social theory can be discovered by reconstructing the conceptual grammar of Gabriel Tarde's micro-sociology and by understanding the ways in which Gilles Deleuze's micro-politics and Michel Foucault's micro-physics have engaged with it. This is articulated in the infinite social multiplicity-invention-imitation-opposition-open system. Guided by infinitist ontology and an epistemology of infinitesimal difference, this paradigm offers a micro-socio-logic capable of producing new ways of understanding social life and its vicissitudes. In the field of social theory, this can be called the infinitesimal revolution.

Fills a gap in social sciences and humanities literature, highlighting the existence of close ties between the social theories of Gabriel Tarde, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault Examines the ways in which these three authors provide novel concepts for understanding social life Re-constructs and articulates those concepts in a more general approach called the paradigm of infinitesimal difference

Autorentext
Sergio Tonkonoff is Researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. He teaches contemporary sociological theory at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Inhalt

1. Tarde and the Infinitesimal Sociology.- 2. Social Change: Inventions, Oppositions, Individuals, and Crowds.- 3. Microphysics and Microsociology: Foucault as Reader of Tarde.- 4. Contagion, Struggle, and Creation: the Heritage of Tarde in Deleuze´s Social Theory.- 5. Towards a New Relational Paradigm in Social Theory.