| This dissertation treats Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of human science and its relevance to contemporary international institutions. While Deleuze scholarship in the study of world politics tends to focus on his collaborations with Felix Guattari, Deleuze's early philosophy of difference reorients the value of his more popular political concepts. Underlying his critical rethinking of sovereignty, territoriality, and power is a conception of difference in-itself that anticipates and influences contemporary methodological frameworks for understanding complex global life, one that also allows for communication between qualitative and quantitative approaches in human and social science. In terms of governing institutions, this study looks at how methodological comportments towards difference (1) depend on both aesthetic and scientific methods, (2) address complex forms of difference in their programs, strategic documents, and audiovisual materials, and (3) condition their capabilities for addressing pluralism, innovation, and emergencies. After developing this position within the Kantian problematic of representation, examples are organized around such topical areas in the study of world politics as security studies, cultural management programs, realism, and contemporary art and media studies, as well as epistemological notions that connect these topics with human science inquiry---recognition, systems, images, and concepts. |
