Deleuze without a doubt became a major figure in various regions of contemporary philosophy. Not only continental philosophy, mostly influenced by phenomenological tradition is adopting Deleuze’s work but also disciplines which seem to be out of reach from mainstream academic reception these days.

Speculative Realism, Speculative Materialism or Object-Oriented Philosophy, even though these young ‘disciplines’ are actually loosely connected only by the rejection of what Meillassoux called correlationism are dealing with Deleuze’s ideas – be it in an affirmative or in a negating way. These ways of working with Deleuze seem to offer controverse forms in continuing Deleuze’s ways of thinking or demonstrating sources of friction which enriches the reception one way or the other. Deleuze’s work seems to become a landmark between and in philosohical disciplines once again.

Not only a dedicated and unique reception but to which extent the concepts of Speculative Realism, Speculative Materialism and Object-Oriented Philosophy (re-)thinking deleuzian ideas is very intriguing.

Some questions emerge from the speculative approaches which deal with Deleuze: Is another way of perceiving Deleuze’s work and combining it with more or less unexpected thinkers such as e.g. Alfred North Whitehead and Bruno Latour amongst others appropriate if one keeps the so called ‘traditional’ reception from a phenomenological or poststructuralist point of view in mind? Moreover – do concepts such as the molecular, the fold, multiplicities and difference as such offer junctions for deliberations that were once excluded by default? E.g. can Deleuze really be called a ‘hyper-realist’?

What kind of light is shet on keyfigures such as Tarde, Simondon or Bergson, just to name a few, who are evoked by Deleuze to enhance and develop his own concepts? Do those lines dissipate or do they have to be reconsidered?

Is ‘traditional’ reception when it wants ‘to put Deleuze to work’ responsible for a more popular perception of certain concepts such as the Rhizome which tend to fail? In which respect will deleuzian concepts enrich academia when thought of in a new way, e.g. social-ontological ideas based on assemblage theory, the social machine or the junction to philosophical pragmatism which already reflect how these notions are able to establish themselves in related disciplines?

And finally: Continental philosophy is challenged by speculative realism especially in terms of  being reproached for not having scrutinised the very core of most of its approaches i.e. Meillassoux’s claim of correlationism. Is contemporary continental philosophy or post-continental-philosophy when freed from traditional boundaries, especially in the case of Deleuze, on the verge of creating deviating access to inherited questions such as subjectivation, the underestimated status  of objects since Kant or of course the real itself, without falling back into naive realism?

We would like to encourage all authors who have or want to deal with Deleuze’s philosophy througout those various and diverse regions and perspectives of philosophy as outlined above to submit their concepts in order to create a picture of what recent Deleuze reception does or is able to look like. Especially if it is not entirely focused on the alleged roots from which Deleuze seemed to have ‘grown up’ resp. if we try to sidestep for a moment the perhaps not that solid categories under which his work was subsumed for some time now.