Christopher Penfield, Deleuze’s Foucault: A Virtual Force Ontology – Edinburgh University Press, April 2026

Thanks to dmf for the link – looks good but expensive, even for the e-book

How does Deleuze’s study of Foucault challenge and deepen our understanding of both philosophers’ thought?

• Provides the first book-length study of Deleuze’s Foucault
• Establishes a novel, previously untreated conceptual framework that Foucault and Deleuze shared, serving as the basis for the philosophical reconstruction of Foucault’s thought
• Includes new insight and analysis from Deleuze’s recently translated and published seminars on Foucault
• Treats of recently published primary source material (e.g., Foucault’s Confessions of the Flesh) as independent critical support

Christopher Penfield illuminates the philosophical encounter between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, developing the first systematic treatment of Deleuze’s book Foucault, originally published in 1986. Using the full spectrum of Foucault’s primary texts, as well as new insights and analysis from Deleuze’s recently translated and published seminars on Foucault, Penfield identifies and elaborates the two thinkers’ shared philosophy of force as the novel conceptual framework of ‘virtual force ontology’.

For the field of Foucault studies, where Foucault still meets with misunderstanding, Penfield clarifies and motivates the demanding, highly abstract portrait of Foucault that Deleuze offers; and in demonstrating Deleuze’s philosophical reconstruction, unlocks unrealized aspects of Foucault’s thought.

For students as well as scholars of Deleuze, Penfield establishes the unique place and importance of Foucault in Deleuze’s oeuvre, illuminating the fundamental impact of Foucault on Deleuze and the ‘common cause’ (Deleuze) that shaped the course of their mutually transformative philosophical relationship.