Repositioning Deleuze as a forerunner to Speculative Realism
Against Continuity is the first book to demonstrate that the beating heart of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy is a systematic ontology of irreducible, singular entities. This requires a radical break with decades of Deleuzian orthodoxy, according to which Deleuze's metaphysics revolves around the dissolution of discrete entities into a continuous world of flows and events.
Arjen Kleinherenbrink takes readers through a close reading of the major concepts and arguments in Deleuze's published works and unpublished seminars. He shows why the usual interpretation of Deleuze as a process philosopher does not stand up to scrutiny, and carefully reconstructs Deleuze's actual but, until now, overlooked ontology. Kleinherenbrink also critically compares key elements of this ontology to seven related contemporary thinkers: Levi Bryant, Maurizio Ferraris, Markus Gabriel, Manuel DeLanda, Graham Harman, Tristan Garcia and Bruno Latour. These comparisons establish Deleuze as an important precursor to object-oriented speculative realism and open up exciting new avenues of thought for critics as well as supporters of Deleuze
Arjen Kleinherenbrink is Assistant Professor in metaphysics and philosophical anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

Arjen Kleinherenbrink is Assistant Professor in the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy, in the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Introduction: The Machine Thesis

1. All Entities are Machines


2. A Speculative Philosophy


3. Method and Structure

1. Deleuze and Ontology

1. Much Ado about Ontology


2. To the Things Themselves


3. A Fourfold and Three Syntheses
   First Intermezzo - Levi Bryant and Twofold Machines

2. The Externality Thesis

1. Relations are External to Terms


2. The Experience of Externality


3. Speculative Arguments for Externality

3. Critiques of Internalism

1. Difference and Repetition


2. Depth and Height


3. The Image of Thought

4. The Machinic Body

1. No Being without a Body


2. All Bodies are Problematic
   Second Intermezzo - Maurizio Ferraris and Unamendable Objects

5. Relations between Machines

1. The Connective Synthesis


2. Sense at the Surface


3. Actuality is a Twofold
   Third Intermezzo - Markus Gabriel and Fields of Sense

6. Inside the Machines

1. The Powers that Be


2. Essence is a Twofold
   Fourth Intermezzo - Manuel DeLanda and Assemblage Theory

7. Machines and Change

1. The Disjunctive Synthesis
   Fifth Intermezzo - Graham Harman and Fourfold Objects


2. The Notion of Becoming


3. Assemblages and Intensities

8. The Construction of Machines

1. The Conjunctive Synthesis
   Sixth Intermezzo - Tristan Garcia and Formal Things


2. Rhizomes and Hierarchies

9. Machine Ontology and Thought

1. Self and World
   Seventh Intermezzo - Bruno Latour and Irreducible Actants


2. Platonism and Paralogisms


3. A Transcendental Empiricism

Conclusion: Ontology and Discontinuity