Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-secularism and the Future of Immanence

This book addresses the relationship between Deleuze’s differential immanence and the notion of religion. Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence vigorously rejects every appeal to the transcendent: it denies that there is anything beyond our direct experience. For this reason, people often presume that there is a deep divide between Deleuze’s philosophy and religion. Now, Daniel Barber shows that religion and Deleuze’s thought share the same motivation: to find new ways to exist. Deleuze and the Naming of God shows how Deleuzian immanence can both oppose religious transcendence and enter into an alliance with immanent accounts of the name of God. In doing so, it shows a way out of the paralysing debate between religion and the secular. It develops the idea of immanence into a way of escaping the stale binary between religion and the secular. It changes the perception of Deleuze’s philosophy from simple affirmation to one in which themes such as suffering become central.

Reviews of Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-secularism and the Future of Immanence

"Daniel Colucciello Barber … has offered his most incisive and challenging contribution to date in Deleuze and the Naming of God. While it is a strong contribution to the study of Deleuze's thought, the book is concerned with far more than the singular themes of Deleuze, immanence, or post-secularism … It has consequences within and well beyond the fold of Deleuze studies."–Maxwell Kennel, University of Waterloo, PhaenEx