Abstract

The hypothesis of an end to the great political and social antagonisms as a consequence of the end of the Cold War has given way to a multiplication of conflicts that are not understandable through the categories of the modern tradition of "the Political". This tradition, from Hobbes to Schmitt, is actually based on centrality of political unity. Even modern populisms preserve this tension for the production of political unity as their distinctive features. Instead, the contemporary antagonisms become instead understandable through the reference to a relational conception of power like that of Foucault, not by chance elaborated close to the emergence of new subjects and new types of social conflict occurred in '68. Deleuze's references to a theory of creative and expressive institutions can help us to read the specific social productivity of these new forms of conflict.