Ricardo Mendoza-Canales

Praxis-CFUL, University of Lisbon

What Is An Act of Resistance?

29 April 2025, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In his conference “What Is the Creative Act?,” Gilles Deleuze defines the work of art as counter-information, closely linking artistic creation with the act of resistance. Both, he argues, short-circuit established positions and hegemonic discourses propagated by systems of communication and information. In this paper, I argue that Gilbert Simondon operates as a kind of gravitational force in Deleuze’s formulation—an invisible yet active presence whose influence has remained largely unacknowledged. To unpack the enigma of Deleuze’s definition, I proceed in three steps. First, I offer a close reading of the conference to trace the train of thought that binds together the creative act, the work of art, and the act resistance as counter-information. Second, I turn to Giorgio Agamben’s commentary on the conference to examine his interpretation of resistance as inoperativity, focusing in particular on his brief but suggestive reference to Simondon. Finally, I return to Simondon’s cybernetics-inspired account of signification. For Simondon, resistance involves the significative inscription of action and emotion within the broader, reticular structure of the transindividual—a form of signification capable of resonating collectively across time. Any human act that expresses itself creatively through material concretion carries within it a potentiality capable of continuing to transform—through resonance—both the individual and their milieu. I conclude by suggesting that Deleuze’s definition of the work of art as an act of resistance implicitly relies on Simondon’s philosophical framework—particularly his account of ontogenesis as a fundamentally informational process.