■Abstract

The topic of this essay is the relation between philosophy and its outside. This ‘its’ has at least three meanings: outside from philosophy, outside into philosophy and outside of philosophy, up to the most extreme meaning of philosophy as the space of the outside. Placing myself on the margin that joins and disjoins them, I am going to refer essentially to three vectors, two of which are already classics to some extent, while another, more recent one, is awaiting further development. The thinkers I refer overall are Foucault, Deleuze and Nietzsche.

Keywords: thought, outside, Foucault, Deleuze, Nietzsche.

1. The topic of this essay is the relation between philosophy and its outside. This ‘its’ has at least three meanings: outsidefrom philosophy, outsideinto philosophy and outsideof philosophy, up to the most extreme meaning of philosophy as the space of the outside. Without being able to establish a clear limit between them —and, actually, placing myself on the margin that joins and disjoins them— Ishall refer essentially to three vectors, two of which are already classics to some extent, while another, more recent one, is awaiting further development.1 From any point from which we may look on our contemporary situation —on the sphere of power, as well as of knowledge, on the social dynamic as well as on the depth of material life— the issue of the outside has established itself at the crossroads between all paths. The very disciplines which are artificially separated by present-day devices of control and evaluation, actually progress due to their reciprocal contamination. It is not by chance that paradigm shifts within each of them are always produced by the encounter, or the clash, with another language, which forces their lexical limits from the outside and modifies their status. Concerning the relation between knowledge and power, in his celebrated Dedication ofThe [pp. 5/116] Pri