The Micropolitics of the Drives

Abstract

This article aims to elaborate a concept of the drives that can suitably underpin an ontology and micropolitics of the self. Proceeding by way of engagements with Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault and Deleuze in particular, it argues that the idea of the drives should be seen to offer an account of the sense, rather than the truth, of the self and the world it encounters. The thesis of the drives opens up a domain of difference that is impersonal and nonsubjective, and as such has drawn criticisms that it does away with both the subject and the space of the political. Against this, the article maintains that this domain is the site of a micropolitics that serves as the guarantor of the possibility of political transformation by the way it impacts on the domain of political subjectivity.