Abstract
The article seeks to establish a contentious dialogue about the work of two authors who, using figures
of speech, reflect on the body and subjectivity in a break line with the cogito‐centered thinking.
On one hand, it reviews the figure of chiasmus as it is proposed by Judith Butler in her theory of
gender performativity. And, secondly, the figure of parallelism as it is worked by Gilles Deleuze who
takes up again ideas raised by Baruch Spinoza in early modernity. Both authors use rhetorical figures
to critically reflect about the relationship between the materiality of the body and the immateriality
of meaning and thought. Beyond the discontinuities that a dialogue like the one proposed
might address, we take up the figures that the authors use to reflect on the body as a way of bringing
closer thoughts that share, in parallel, the interest in the differences that shake identities. It is
the purpose of this article to seek a possible encounter, or perhaps a fold, between the two thoughts
that could open a space for a further reflection on the bodily experience of gender and sexuality.