Deleuze and Peirce: An (Im)possible match

This article proposes a theoretical alliance between Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy and Charles Sanders Peirce’s thought. Deleuze had access only to a “second-hand Peirce”, mediated through Gérard Deledalle’s anthologies. He never read Peirce’s work directly. Thus the theoretical operation of staying at the intersection between Deleuze and Peirce cannot but take the form of an equivocation, and in particular of a hermeneutic equivocation. I will begin by proposing a method of “hermeneutic machination”, inhabiting the crossroads between two radically heterogeneous traditions, in order to abductively show their consonances and continuities. The aim is to highlight a new possible image of thought that can face the problems of our time. The attempt is also to hold together Deleuze’s and Peirce’s cosmological aspirations, as well as a new image of thought that lives in the mutual relation between virtuality and actuality, i.e. between generality and individuation. Continuity and discontinuity are in this perspective a “conceptual perimeter” for an equivocation between Deleuze and Peirce, at the intersection of semiotics and immanence.