Abstract

This paper proposes a new genealogy of law, which is opposed to the Modern theory of sovereignty. The principal founders of this new perspective are Gabriel Tarde and Gilles Deleuze, as they consider the law as a flow of beliefs and desires that is able to propagate through a process of imitation. This does not mean that the law is a kind of model that is simply copied by the social actors, because the imitative propagation is an operation not only of repetition, but also of differentiation. In this way, a law always coincides with an action of invention of new social relationships, which have the opportunity to expand and to create new communities and new institutions. The micro-social origin of the law allows political philosophy to abandon modern contractualism and to rethink society as a positive encounter of flows and singularities, which interact according to a principle of sympathy. Therefore, Tarde and Deleuze, building on an ontology of difference, show an original way of thinking law as a practice of social integration and inclusion.