Corry Shores
Middle East Technical University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Bergson, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Deleuze, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Deleuze & Cinema, and 78 morePhilosophy, Film Studies, Film Theory, Film Analysis, Film History, Philosophy of Film, Film, Henri Bergson, Posthumanism, Baruch Spinoza, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Aesthetics, Film Aesthetics, Film Theory and Practice, Stan Brakhage, Jerry Lewis, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Barry Dainton, Time-Consciousness, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, Dialetheic Logic, Graham Priest, Paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Dance Studies, Comics and Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Study, Comics Studies, Comics/Sequential Art, Comics, Charles S. Peirce, Visual Semiotics, Visual Narrative, Semiotics, Chris Ware, Comic Book History, Self and Identity, Tactical media, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Media Studies, Information Technology, Hacktivism, Anarchism, Anarchist Studies, Piracy, Franz Kafka, Art Spiegelman maus, Frank Miller, Joe Sacco, English Literature, Graphic Novels, Comics Studies, Manga Studies, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Visual Culture, Comics Journalism, Art Spiegelman, History and Philosophy of Geometry, Thierry Groensteen, Video Games, Logic, Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistency, Paraconsistent Logics, Dialethic Logic, Gilbert Simondon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Video Games and Learning, Games, History of Games, Ancient board games, Computer Games Technology, Hacked Arcade Games, Digital Games, Computer Games, Jorge Luis Borges, Jan Patocka, and JC Beall(Philosophy, Film Studies, Film Theory, Film Analysis, Film History, Philosophy of Film, Film, Henri Bergson, Posthumanism, Baruch Spinoza, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Aesthetics, Film Aesthetics, Film Theory and Practice, Stan Brakhage, Jerry Lewis, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Barry Dainton, Time-Consciousness, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, Dialetheic Logic, Graham Priest, Paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Dance Studies, Comics and Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Study, Comics Studies, Comics/Sequential Art, Comics, Charles S. Peirce, Visual Semiotics, Visual Narrative, Semiotics, Chris Ware, Comic Book History, Self and Identity, Tactical media, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Media Studies, Information Technology, Hacktivism, Anarchism, Anarchist Studies, Piracy, Franz Kafka, Art Spiegelman maus, Frank Miller, Joe Sacco, English Literature, Graphic Novels, Comics Studies, Manga Studies, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Visual Culture, Comics Journalism, Art Spiegelman, History and Philosophy of Geometry, Thierry Groensteen, Video Games, Logic, Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistency, Paraconsistent Logics, Dialethic Logic, Gilbert Simondon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Video Games and Learning, Games, History of Games, Ancient board games, Computer Games Technology, Hacked Arcade Games, Digital Games, Computer Games, Jorge Luis Borges, Jan Patocka, and JC Beall)edit
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote two 'logic' books: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and The Logic of Sense. However, in neither of these books nor in any other works does Deleuze articulate in a formal way the features of the... more
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote two 'logic' books: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and The Logic of Sense. However, in neither of these books nor in any other works does Deleuze articulate in a formal way the features of the logic he employs. He certainly does not use classical logic. And the best options for the non-classical logic that he may be implementing are: fuzzy, intuitionist, and many-valued. These are applicable to his concepts of heterogeneous composition and becoming, affirmative synthetic disjunction, and powers of the false.
In The Logic of Gilles Deleuze: Basic Principles, Corry Shores examines the applicability of three non-classical logics to Deleuze's philosophy, by building from the philosophical and logical writings of Graham Priest, the world's leading proponent of dialetheism. Through so doing, Shores argues that Deleuze's logic is best understood as a dialetheic, paraconsistent, many-valued logic.
In The Logic of Gilles Deleuze: Basic Principles, Corry Shores examines the applicability of three non-classical logics to Deleuze's philosophy, by building from the philosophical and logical writings of Graham Priest, the world's leading proponent of dialetheism. Through so doing, Shores argues that Deleuze's logic is best understood as a dialetheic, paraconsistent, many-valued logic.
Research Interests: Logic, Fuzzy Logic, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Pierre Klossowski, and 15 moreDeleuze, Bertrand Russell, Paradoxes, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Orson Welles, Negation (Logic), Non-Classical Logic, Eugène Dupréel, Paraconsistent logic, Intuitionism, Negation, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, and Dialetheic Logic
For Deleuze, the creation and conveyance of meaning requires not a strict fidelity to an original idea, message or image but rather its deformation. The forces causing such disfigurations operate in gesture, vocalisation and text, with... more
For Deleuze, the creation and conveyance of meaning requires not a strict fidelity to an original idea, message or image but rather its deformation. The forces causing such disfigurations operate in gesture, vocalisation and text, with one level sometimes disrupting the others. Among them, gesture plays an especially important role, given Deleuze's attention to bodily experience. He locates it in theatre, painting and cinema, particularly in the works of Carmelo Bene, Francis Bacon and Jerry Lewis. In these cases, instead of conveying a recognisable message, a deformative gesture sends a shock wave that scrambles normal meaning assignments and codings. Yet, although gesture is a main channel for these communication disruptive forces, their origin may lie elsewhere, namely, in a 'pick-up' of influences resulting from an inter-affective encounter between heterogeneous bodies.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Abstract Art, Modern Art, Painting, Gilbert Simondon, and 15 moreGilles Deleuze, Film and Philosophy, Affect (Cultural Theory), Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock, Deleuze & Cinema, Digital and Analog Communication, Francis Bacon (Painter), Wassily Kandinsky, Chaos, Vincent Van Gogh, Carmelo Bene, Henri Focillon, Jerry Lewis, and Jacques Rivette
Deleuze never explicitly formulates his philosophy of logical truth-values. It thus remains an open question as to the number and types he held there to be. Despite his explicit comments on these matters, additional textual evidence... more
Deleuze never explicitly formulates his philosophy of logical truth-values. It thus remains an open question as to the number and types he held there to be. Despite his explicit comments on these matters, additional textual evidence suggests that in his thinking on the event, he favored a third truth-value, holding either the analetheic view that some truth-bearers can be truthvalueless or the dialetheic view that some truth-bearers can be both true and false. I first argue that taking a logical approach to Deleuze's thinking is feasible, despite his and others' claims that might suggest otherwise. Next, I examine his explicit statements to show that they cannot be taken at face value and that, rather, we need to transpose his claims into contemporary terminology in order to accurately assess them. I lastly turn to his Leibniz-inspired philosophy of time to argue that the affirmations involved in this conception strongly suggest a dialetheic tendency in his thinking.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Logic, Truth, Jorge Luis Borges, Gilles Deleuze, and 15 moreDeleuze, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Events, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Possible Worlds, Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Truth-value Gaps, Dialetheism, Many-Valued Logic, Graham Priest, Deleuze Studies, JC Beall, Deleuze and Guattari, and Truth-values
The continental philosophy of non-classical logics is a relatively new field that seeks to determine whether any aspects of certain continental philosophers' thinking can be characterized in terms of non-classical logics. Some of the main... more
The continental philosophy of non-classical logics is a relatively new field that seeks to determine whether any aspects of certain continental philosophers' thinking can be characterized in terms of non-classical logics. Some of the main figures that have been examined so far are Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and François Laruelle. Although many of these studies are grounded in the writings of Graham Priest, who wrote some of the seminal texts in the field, Jc Beall's work also features prominently in a number of cases. After surveying this field and highlighting Beall's influence within it, I claim that it can be substantially expanded by making further uses of Beall's writings, especially ones that introduce non-classical logics in ways that are especially suitable for this particular field of study and also that discuss such topics as negation, subclassical logics, logical pluralism, and glutty futures.
Research Interests: Logic, Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, François Laruelle, and 11 moreContinental (vs.) Analytical Philosophy, Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, Connections between analytic and continental philosophy, Post-Continental Philosophy, Paracomplete Logic, JC Beall, Contintental Philosophy, and integration of "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy(Continental (vs.) Analytical Philosophy, Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, Connections between analytic and continental philosophy, Post-Continental Philosophy, Paracomplete Logic, JC Beall, Contintental Philosophy, and integration of "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy)
(Continental (vs.) Analytical Philosophy, Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, Connections between analytic and continental philosophy, Post-Continental Philosophy, Paracomplete Logic, JC Beall, Contintental Philosophy, and integration of "analytic" and "Continental" philosophy)
Vivian Sobchack's Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of embodied film experience is applicable, with certain modifications, to the embodied comics experience, especially when considering her analyses of Gestalt closure, bodily affectivity, and... more
Vivian Sobchack's Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of embodied film experience is applicable, with certain modifications, to the embodied comics experience, especially when considering her analyses of Gestalt closure, bodily affectivity, and synaesthesia. We adopt these concepts yet with a different aim, namely, to account for shocking, disorienting, and decompositional embodied comics experiences of dramatically deformed bodies. For this task, we employ Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of shocking sensations and their role in promoting the "body without organs." While it can be depicted in comics, like it is in Francis Bacon's paintings, the visual experience of such a figure may also communicate these disordering forces to the viewing reader's body as well, thereby shockingly disrupting their own inner workings. We test the potential applicability of these Deleuzian concepts by examining deformational bodies in Peter Bagge, Mary Fleener, and Craig Thompson, which will demonstrate the potential aptness of a Deleuze-inspired analysis of physiological shocks in the comics experience.
Research Interests: Aesthetics, Synaesthesia, Comics Studies, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, and 15 moreComics, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Comics/Sequential Art, Deleuze, Phenomenology of the body, Cinema, Comics and Graphic Novels, Deleuze & Cinema, Francis Bacon (Painter), Theory of Comics, Scott McCloud, Vivian Sobchack, Gestalt, and Thierry Groensteen
Jean-Pierre Dupuy argues that our failure to prevent the looming climate catastrophe results from a faulty metaphysics of time: because we believe the present can proceed down one of the many branches that extend into the future, some of... more
Jean-Pierre Dupuy argues that our failure to prevent the looming climate catastrophe results from a faulty metaphysics of time: because we believe the present can proceed down one of the many branches that extend into the future, some of which bypass the catastrophe, we do not think it is absolutely urgent to take drastic action now. His solution to this problem of demotivation is “enlightened doomsaying” in “projected time”, which means that we affirm the coming catastrophe as something real in the future rather than being a mere possibility; thus, we regard it seriously enough that we are motivated to take the needed actions to prevent it. One potential obstacle to this proposal is that it requires the forming of consensus and coordination with the powerful players who benefit from our current path and whose apparently near-total grip on this catastrophic future may itself discourage action. We then consider an alternative model based on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the present–future relation. Although it has the branching structure that Dupuy is wary of, it may not suffer from the same problem of demotivation on account of the way it conceives the complex structure of the present event. For this reason, the Deleuzian model may be more suited to motivating action in a world where the future must be fought for rather than unanimously agreed upon.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Climate Change, Philosophy Of Climate Change, Metaphysics of Time, Gilles Deleuze, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Michel Foucault, Philosophy of Time, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Future Time Perspective, Francis Bacon (Painter), Counterfactual Thinking, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Gunther Anders, Counterfactuals, Diagram, Catastrophism, Climate Change Literature, and Extinction Rebellion(Slavoj Žižek, Michel Foucault, Philosophy of Time, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Future Time Perspective, Francis Bacon (Painter), Counterfactual Thinking, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Gunther Anders, Counterfactuals, Diagram, Catastrophism, Climate Change Literature, and Extinction Rebellion)
(Slavoj Žižek, Michel Foucault, Philosophy of Time, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Future Time Perspective, Francis Bacon (Painter), Counterfactual Thinking, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Gunther Anders, Counterfactuals, Diagram, Catastrophism, Climate Change Literature, and Extinction Rebellion)
Deleuze’s notion of the powers of the false is central to his philosophy of truth and becoming, but it is also one of his most complexly elaborated ideas, with its various diverging conceptual dimensions inviting further analysis and... more
Deleuze’s notion of the powers of the false is central to his philosophy of truth and becoming, but it is also one of his most complexly elaborated ideas, with its various diverging conceptual dimensions inviting further analysis and reconfiguration. One perplexing conception here is that falsity is more primary than truth, because it is what creates truths of the highest order. We examine the thinking behind this idea by proceeding through Deleuze’s notions of the Devil and the sorcerer, Dupréelian consolidation and consistency, the false movement of the world, the powers of the false in contrast to mere falsity, having done with judgment, the simulacrum, and three particular figures of the falsifier, namely, the fabulist, the clairvoyant seer, and the self- and world-creative artist.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Painting, Philosophy of Film, Truth, Demonology, and 15 moreGilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Cinema, Film and Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Nouveau roman, Orson Welles, Deleuze & Cinema, Eugène Dupréel, Wilhelm Worringer, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Becoming, Sorcery, Art Forgery, and Deleuze and Guattari
To compare Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze’s phenomenal bodies, I first examine how for Merleau-Ponty phenomena appear on the basis of three levels of integration: 1) between the parts of the world, 2) between the parts of the body, and 3)... more
To compare Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze’s phenomenal bodies, I first examine how for Merleau-Ponty phenomena appear on the basis of three levels of integration: 1) between the parts of the world, 2) between the parts of the body, and 3) between the body and its world. I contest that Deleuze’s attacks on phenomenology can be seen as constructive critiques rather than as being expressions of an anti-phenomenological position. By building from Deleuze’s definition of the phenomenon and from his more phenomenologically relevant writings, we find that phenomena for him are given to the body under exactly the opposite conditions as for Merleau-Ponty, namely that 1) the world’s differences 2) appear to a disordered body that 3) comes into shocking affective contact with its surroundings. I argue that a Deleuzian theory of bodily-given phenomena is better suited than Merleau-Ponty’s model in the task of accounting for the intensity of phenomenal appearings.
Research Interests:
One of Art Spiegelman’s motivations for using animal forms for the characters in the two volumes of Maus was to depict the dehumanization of the Jews during the Holocaust and as well the inhuman behavior of the Nazis and people of other... more
One of Art Spiegelman’s motivations for using animal forms for the characters in the two volumes of Maus was to depict the dehumanization of the Jews during the Holocaust and as well the inhuman behavior of the Nazis and people of other nations. There is another side to this dehumanization in Maus that we will explore, namely what Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) call “becoming animal,” which is a mode of social and personal transformation undergone for the sake of survival and vitality and obtained through adaptation and mutation. D&G use Spinoza’s account of bodily composition and affective alteration to explain how threatening influences can push people and their groups into a temporary state of anonymity. While under this mode of indeterminacy, new arrangements and compositions may freely form and dissipate, which allows them to effectively survive, evade, and subvert the intruding powers. D&G further elaborate these notions of “becoming-animal” and the formation of anonymous “packs” by utilizing their concept of the “machinic assemblage,” whose parts reconfigure in order to disrupt or “minorize” the machinery of the larger system. This minorization operates as well on the level of language, where the minor group works within the major language system to undermine their oppressor’s regime of signs and values. Maus for example adopts the visually metaphoric language that presented the Jewish people in rodent form, as seen for instance in the Nazi propaganda documentary The Eternal Jew (Fritz Hippler, Der Ewige Jude, 1940), which depicts the Jews as rats infesting the entire world. But by shifting to mice and by drawing the Nazis as cats, Spiegelman evades the fixed meanings of the major visual language and introduces very different connotations and interpretations. Yet, one criticism of Spiegelman’s use of animal forms is that it sanitizes the horrors of the Holocaust and falsifies them by rendering them cute and harmless. I reply by including Maus under what D&G call a “minor genre,” in this case a particular kind of minor documentary. Filmed documentaries are rarely objective and unbiased, as we have seen already with the propaganda film The Eternal Jew’s distortions and misrepresentations. And Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985), instead of presenting any archival footage of the Holocaust, merely interviews survivors, witnesses and former Nazi SS officers to “document” the subjective realities internal to the events. Maus as well is based on the recorded interviews of a Holocaust survivor, but instead of providing objective depictions of the visual horrors in his experiences, it instead documents the existential experience of losing cultural and personal identity. And the horrors of this particular element of the events are more effectively and faithfully documented using animal forms.
Research Interests: Documentation, Comics Studies, Comic Book Studies, History and Memory, Comics, and 50 moreGilles Deleuze, Comics/Sequential Art, Felix Guattari, Graphic Novels, Social and Collective Memory, Cultural Memory, Deleuze, Holocaust Studies, Minority Languages, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jewish Literature, Graphic Novels Study, Comics and Graphic Novels, Art Spiegelman, Félix Guattari, Holocaust Literature, Holocaust, Documentary, Holocaust theories of representation, Memory, Theory of Comics, Oral History and Memory, Jewish heritage, Polish-Jewish / German-Jewish Relations, klezmer revival, Jewish heritage tourism, Holocaust commemoration, antisemitism, social identity, oral history, Comic books, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Minority Literature, Minor Literature, The Holocaust, Holocaust Memory, English Literature, Graphic Novels, Comics Studies, Manga Studies, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Visual Culture, Holocaust Shoah, Becoming Animal, Gilles Deleuze and Literature, Comic Books and Graphic Novels, Deleuze and contemporary art, Deleuze Studies, Graphic Novel, Holocaust History and Historiography, Art Spiegelman maus, Deleuze and Guattari, History and theory of sequential art, comics and graphic novels, Machinic Assemblages, Refugee memory, History of Holocaust Survivors In the Aftermath of World War II, Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, Intersections Between Art and Philosophy (Expecially Bergson, Deleuze and Henry) and Art and Music, Documentary, Comic book, Visual studies, Documentary Graphic Novels, Deleuze and Comics, and Documentary Comics(Gilles Deleuze, Comics/Sequential Art, Felix Guattari, Graphic Novels, Social and Collective Memory, Cultural Memory, Deleuze, Holocaust Studies, Minority Languages, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jewish Literature, Graphic Novels Study, Comics and Graphic Novels, Art Spiegelman, Félix Guattari, Holocaust Literature, Holocaust, Documentary, Holocaust theories of representation, Memory, Theory of Comics, Oral History and Memory, Jewish heritage, Polish-Jewish / German-Jewish Relations, klezmer revival, Jewish heritage tourism, Holocaust commemoration, antisemitism, social identity, oral history, Comic books, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Minority Literature, Minor Literature, The Holocaust, Holocaust Memory, English Literature, Graphic Novels, Comics Studies, Manga Studies, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Visual Culture, Holocaust Shoah, Becoming Animal, Gilles Deleuze and Literature, Comic Books and Graphic Novels, Deleuze and contemporary art, Deleuze Studies, Graphic Novel, Holocaust History and Historiography, Art Spiegelman maus, Deleuze and Guattari, History and theory of sequential art, comics and graphic novels, Machinic Assemblages, Refugee memory, History of Holocaust Survivors In the Aftermath of World War II, Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, Intersections Between Art and Philosophy (Expecially Bergson, Deleuze and Henry) and Art and Music, Documentary, Comic book, Visual studies, Documentary Graphic Novels, Deleuze and Comics, and Documentary Comics)
(Gilles Deleuze, Comics/Sequential Art, Felix Guattari, Graphic Novels, Social and Collective Memory, Cultural Memory, Deleuze, Holocaust Studies, Minority Languages, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jewish Literature, Graphic Novels Study, Comics and Graphic Novels, Art Spiegelman, Félix Guattari, Holocaust Literature, Holocaust, Documentary, Holocaust theories of representation, Memory, Theory of Comics, Oral History and Memory, Jewish heritage, Polish-Jewish / German-Jewish Relations, klezmer revival, Jewish heritage tourism, Holocaust commemoration, antisemitism, social identity, oral history, Comic books, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Minority Literature, Minor Literature, The Holocaust, Holocaust Memory, English Literature, Graphic Novels, Comics Studies, Manga Studies, Popular Culture, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Visual Culture, Holocaust Shoah, Becoming Animal, Gilles Deleuze and Literature, Comic Books and Graphic Novels, Deleuze and contemporary art, Deleuze Studies, Graphic Novel, Holocaust History and Historiography, Art Spiegelman maus, Deleuze and Guattari, History and theory of sequential art, comics and graphic novels, Machinic Assemblages, Refugee memory, History of Holocaust Survivors In the Aftermath of World War II, Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, Intersections Between Art and Philosophy (Expecially Bergson, Deleuze and Henry) and Art and Music, Documentary, Comic book, Visual studies, Documentary Graphic Novels, Deleuze and Comics, and Documentary Comics)
In Deleuze’s treatments of Nietzsche’s amor fati and of Stoic fatalism, we find a temporal structure that couples logically incompatible elements, namely, chance and destiny in the first case and will and fate in the second. In Deleuze’s... more
In Deleuze’s treatments of Nietzsche’s amor fati and of Stoic fatalism, we find a temporal structure that couples logically incompatible elements, namely, chance and destiny in the first case and will and fate in the second. In Deleuze’s accounts, it is by means of a particular sort of affirmational activity that allows our immediate, present temporality – during which chance and willful action reign – to intersect with an eternal sort of temporality that houses our fate and destiny and that thus lies outside our immediate grasp. To understand this combination of incompatible temporalities in Deleuze’s philosophy, we will employ paraconsistent reasoning, which allows us to affirm both the truth and falsity of some proposition, or, construed another way, it allows us to dually affirm both a proposition and its paraconsistent negation. We thereby will consider these temporal structures as involving “dialetheias” (true contradictions). Under this view, we will also explore a dialetheic interpretation of Deleuze’s notions of the powers of the false, from his writings on Nietzsche, and of prohairesis (“volition”) and Aiôn and Chronos, from his writings on the Stoics.
It is important to emphasize in a Deleuzian context that paraconsistent negation in such contradictory formulations bears a critically different logical property from classical negation, namely, it does not cancel, “destroy,” or exclude what it negates. This is because negation is distinct from denial in paraconsistent reasoning: we do not both affirm and deny the same proposition; rather, we affirm both its truth and falsity. Thus by means of this paraconsistent mode of reasoning, we can implement a logical structure that is suitable to the sorts of affirmative synthetic disjunctions involved in Deleuze’s logically complex temporal structures. This in the end enables us to understand how for Deleuze we may affirm our fate while also influencing the directions that the present develops toward.
It is important to emphasize in a Deleuzian context that paraconsistent negation in such contradictory formulations bears a critically different logical property from classical negation, namely, it does not cancel, “destroy,” or exclude what it negates. This is because negation is distinct from denial in paraconsistent reasoning: we do not both affirm and deny the same proposition; rather, we affirm both its truth and falsity. Thus by means of this paraconsistent mode of reasoning, we can implement a logical structure that is suitable to the sorts of affirmative synthetic disjunctions involved in Deleuze’s logically complex temporal structures. This in the end enables us to understand how for Deleuze we may affirm our fate while also influencing the directions that the present develops toward.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Stoicism, Jorge Luis Borges, Friedrich Nietzsche, and 12 moreDeleuze, Philosophy of Time, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Negation (Logic), Paraconsistent logic, Dialetheism, Bifurcation, Graham Priest, Stoicism of Chysippus, Gilles Deluze, Richard Routley/Sylvan, and philo'sophy of logic
The asubjective, impersonal nature of Deleuze’s philosophy is one reason it is often considered to be anti-phenomenological. Yet, as Patočka argues, phenomenology should, in fact, be asubjective in the first place. This opens the... more
The asubjective, impersonal nature of Deleuze’s philosophy is one reason it is often considered to be anti-phenomenological. Yet, as Patočka argues, phenomenology should, in fact, be asubjective in the first place. This opens the possibility of reevaluating Deleuze’s philosophy of experience to see the extent to which it might be considered an asubjective phenomenology. What we find is that Deleuze differs from Patočka in one important respect, namely, that Patočka’s philosophy of experience is personal while Deleuze’s is impersonal. Thus, we wonder if an impersonal, asubjective phenomenology is possible, which might include Deleuze’s views. To this end, we first study Patočka’s reasons for going against Husserl and reorienting phenomenological studies away from an egoic subjectivity. In brief, Patočka holds that subjectivity is not a phenomenal given and thus is not to be of primary concern when doing phenomenology. What an examination of immediate experience uncovers rather than a transcendental subjectivity is instead a “thrust” into the world around us. Deleuze’s philosophy of experience likewise seeks such a movement outside oneself, which we see in his use of Ferlinghetti’s “fourth person singular;” yet, Deleuze’s notion of a Peircian “Zerothness” makes it evident that, unlike Patočka, he does not locate personhood at the basis of experience but rather has in mind a particular sort of impersonal panexperientialism.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Phenomenology, Personhood, Samuel Beckett, Gilles Deleuze, and 15 moreHenri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Consciousness, Charles S. Peirce, Panpsychism, Jan Patocka, Charles Sanders Peirce, Panexperientialism, Subjectivity, Experience, Selfhood, Asubjective Phenomenology, Lived Body, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Shortly before Gilles Deleuze's death, he discovered a new kind of music: glitch, in particular, Oval's Systemisch. "[Achim] Szepanski contacted Deleuze himself, sending material by Oval and other Mille artists, and asking if he'd write... more
Shortly before Gilles Deleuze's death, he discovered a new kind of music: glitch, in particular, Oval's Systemisch. "[Achim] Szepanski contacted Deleuze himself, sending material by Oval and other Mille artists, and asking if he'd write an essay for Achim's planned anthology of techno theory, Maschinelle Strategeme. The great man wrote back saying he couldn't do it, but gave his blessing to the label, and said that he particularly dug Oval. 'He even wrote about specific tracks!' exclaims Achim" (Technodeleuze and Mille Plateaux, 40-41). Now, why did Deleuze like this album so much? Sadly, his written comments were lost in a fire, leaving it as a total mystery what it is about glitch music that moved him so profoundly. Nonetheless, while we may never find documentation providing a certain answer, we might still take this situation as an opportunity to advance our understanding of Deleuze's other musically-related philosophical notions. For instance, Deleuze's characterization of rhythm is a promising companion-concept to glitch, given the particular way Deleuze understands rhythm as involving irregularities and unpredictabilities. So we ask: might there be ways of understanding glitch as a continuation and elaboration on his notion of rhythm? Or in the very least, might a study of glitch music illuminate certain important conceptual features of Deleuze's notion of rhythm?
Research Interests:
In his book The Stream of Consciousness, Barry Dainton proposes his "overlap model" to explain the phenomenon of continuous time without succumbing to the problems of previous models, such as the ones by Edmund Husserl and C.D. Broad.... more
In his book The Stream of Consciousness, Barry Dainton proposes his "overlap model" to explain the phenomenon of continuous time without succumbing to the problems of previous models, such as the ones by Edmund Husserl and C.D. Broad. Dainton rejects models with instantaneous phenomenal presents, because he favors ones with a durationally extensive "specious present." Yet, his portrayal of present perceptual awareness as spanning an extent of time could become problematic if we try to square it with a view of the physical world's present temporality as being composed of moment-by-moment instantaneous variations that we might be detecting in our perceptual experience. So, in accordance with Dainton's aim of providing realist models of phenomenal time, I will make use of the concept of instantaneous velocity that is used in physics, along with the notion of sensory memory from perception studies, to provide a model of the specious present in which the present moment of consciousness involves a direct awareness of instantaneous change.
Research Interests: Phenomenology, Metaphysics of Time, Time-Consciousness, Time Studies, Edmund Husserl, and 15 moreConsciousness, Memory Studies, Philosophy of Time, Space and Time (Philosophy), Time Perception, Phenomenology of Temporality, Consciousness Studies, Presentism, Phenomenal Consciousness, Phenomenology of Time, Specious Present, Sensory Memory, Barry Dainton, Charles Dunbar Broad, and Instantaneous Speed(Consciousness, Memory Studies, Philosophy of Time, Space and Time (Philosophy), Time Perception, Phenomenology of Temporality, Consciousness Studies, Presentism, Phenomenal Consciousness, Phenomenology of Time, Specious Present, Sensory Memory, Barry Dainton, Charles Dunbar Broad, and Instantaneous Speed)
(Consciousness, Memory Studies, Philosophy of Time, Space and Time (Philosophy), Time Perception, Phenomenology of Temporality, Consciousness Studies, Presentism, Phenomenal Consciousness, Phenomenology of Time, Specious Present, Sensory Memory, Barry Dainton, Charles Dunbar Broad, and Instantaneous Speed)
We respond to a phenomenological challenge set forth in Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?," namely, to seek a method for obtaining a phenomenological description of non-human animal experience faithful to an animal's... more
We respond to a phenomenological challenge set forth in Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like To Be a Bat?," namely, to seek a method for obtaining a phenomenological description of non-human animal experience faithful to an animal's first-person subjective perspective. First, we examine "translational" strategies employing empathy and communication with animals. Then we turn to a "transpositional" strategy from Uexküll's Umwelt theory in which we objectively determine the components of a non-human animal's subjective world of experience and then map those coordinates onto our own subjective world. While this method gives us partial access to the animal's "perception-world" aspect of its Umwelt, it does not inform us about what it is like to live in the interactive, "effect-world" aspect. To better overcome this limitation, we add a "transformational" approach derived from Deleuze's & Guattari's notion of "becoming-animal," in which we take on an animal's manners and capacities for interacting with the other objects and creatures in its world.
Research Interests: Perception, Animal Science, Animal Behavior, Animal Studies, Phenomenology, and 15 moreVisual perception, Gilles Deleuze, Phenomenology of the body, Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Affect Studies, Umwelt, Jakob von Uexküll, Affect (Cultural Theory), Affect, Elias Canetti, David Abram, Thomas Nagel, Animals, and Becoming Animal
Some posthumanists see the potential in forthcoming enhancement technologies to alter human beings so much that we would no longer recognize them as members of our species. One sort of enhancement technology are prosthetic devices that... more
Some posthumanists see the potential in forthcoming enhancement technologies to alter human beings so much that we would no longer recognize them as members of our species. One sort of enhancement technology are prosthetic devices that would replace or increase normal human functioning, for example computer chips implanted in the brain or robotic arms controlled with our minds. On account of neuroplasticity, our brains would gradually reconfigure themselves so that we may use the prosthesis as though it were biologically a part of us. And, if our bodily organs can be replaced by mechanical counterparts, then piece-by-piece, as our body ages and its malfunctioning parts are replaced, one might gradually become less a human and more a machine, and one with extraordinary non-human abilities. There are even developments in brain simulation that could allow a computer to handle the functioning of large parts of one’s brain, opening the possibility that one’s whole brain might be “uploaded” to continue performing its functions on a computer connected to a robotic body. If the process of body-part replacement were slow and gradual enough that our minds and bodies always have ample opportunity to adjust to the new prosthetic devices, is it not conceivable that we could make a complete and continuous transition from human to machine using these technologies? Andy Clark’s and David Chalmers’ “extended mind hypothesis” provides a theoretical account for our bodily and cognitive extension into external technologies, and Clark as well as therapeutic prosthetic researchers draw from Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the body to explain how such devices become a part of our body schemas. But, is Merleau-Ponty’s “organic” view of the body really the best theoretical framework to explain how our bodies are becoming more and more robotic? I will argue instead that Deleuze’s and Guattari’s “machinic” model is a more promising theoretical basis for the notion of posthuman enhancement and also for successful therapeutic prosthesis usage.
Research Interests: Posthumanism, Amputation & Prosthetic Wearers, Cybernetics, Surrealism, Embodiment, and 26 morePhenomenology, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Extended Mind, Transhumanism, Dada, Phenomenology of the body, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Human Enhancement, Prosthesis, Merleau-Ponty, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Philosophy of Cybernetics, Heterogeneity, Primates, Dadaism, Dadaism & Surrealism, Whole Brain Emulation, Andy Clark, David Chalmers, Jean Tinguely, Chiasm, Man Ray, Anti-Oedipus, Machinic Assemblages, and Rube Goldberg(Phenomenology, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Extended Mind, Transhumanism, Dada, Phenomenology of the body, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Human Enhancement, Prosthesis, Merleau-Ponty, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Philosophy of Cybernetics, Heterogeneity, Primates, Dadaism, Dadaism & Surrealism, Whole Brain Emulation, Andy Clark, David Chalmers, Jean Tinguely, Chiasm, Man Ray, Anti-Oedipus, Machinic Assemblages, and Rube Goldberg)
(Phenomenology, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Extended Mind, Transhumanism, Dada, Phenomenology of the body, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Human Enhancement, Prosthesis, Merleau-Ponty, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Philosophy of Cybernetics, Heterogeneity, Primates, Dadaism, Dadaism & Surrealism, Whole Brain Emulation, Andy Clark, David Chalmers, Jean Tinguely, Chiasm, Man Ray, Anti-Oedipus, Machinic Assemblages, and Rube Goldberg)
By means of Vivian Sobchack's semiotic film phenomenology, we may examine our immediate perceptual acts in film experience in order to determine the ways that the primordial language of embodied existence found at this primary level... more
By means of Vivian Sobchack's semiotic film phenomenology, we may examine our immediate perceptual acts in film experience in order to determine the ways that the primordial language of embodied existence found at this primary level grounds the secondary level of the more explicit interpretations we give to the film's elements. Although Gilles Deleuze is openly defiant toward the phenomenological tradition, his studies of film experience can serve this purpose as well, because he is interested in the direct and pre-verbal significance of cinematic images. To bring his observations more fruitfully into film phenomenological studies, I will examine his notion of the discordantly operating body and as well offer a phenomenological interpretation for his notion of cinematic signs. I then apply this Deleuzian semiotic film phenomenology to his analysis of deep focus cinematography in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). When watching one particular scene, different layers of our film experience, namely, those of visual and of temporal depth, collide in such a way that they provide the phenomenal basis for us to produce a temporal interpretation of the spatial relations held between the displayed images.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Synaesthesia, Time-Consciousness, Gilles Deleuze, and 15 moreMaurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Orson Welles, Phenomenology of Temporality, Deleuze & Cinema, Cinematography, Stan Brakhage, Depth Perception, Andre Bazin, Phenomenology of Time, Vivian Sobchack, and Phenomenology of Film Experience(Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Orson Welles, Phenomenology of Temporality, Deleuze & Cinema, Cinematography, Stan Brakhage, Depth Perception, Andre Bazin, Phenomenology of Time, Vivian Sobchack, and Phenomenology of Film Experience)
(Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Orson Welles, Phenomenology of Temporality, Deleuze & Cinema, Cinematography, Stan Brakhage, Depth Perception, Andre Bazin, Phenomenology of Time, Vivian Sobchack, and Phenomenology of Film Experience)
Enhancement technologies may someday grant us capacities far beyond what we now consider humanly possible. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg suggest that we might survive the deaths of our physical bodies by living as computer... more
Enhancement technologies may someday grant us capacities far beyond what we now consider humanly possible. Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg suggest that we might survive the deaths of our physical bodies by living as computer emulations. In 2008, they issued a report, or “roadmap,” from a conference where experts in all relevant fields collaborated to determine the path to “whole brain emulation.” Advancing this technology could also aid philosophical research. Their “roadmap” defends certain philosophical assumptions required for this technology’s success, so by determining the reasons why it succeeds or fails, we can obtain empirical data for philosophical debates regarding our mind and selfhood. The scope ranges widely, so I merely survey some possibilities, namely, I argue that this technology could help us determine (1) if the mind is an emergent phenomenon, (2) if analog technology is necessary for brain emulation, and (3) if neural randomness is so wild that a complete emulation is impossible.
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In practice, phenomenology is an investigation of one's own consciousness by means of introspective awareness. Nonetheless, it can be considered a special sort of science, given that it obtains its data using a rigorous methodology. On... more
In practice, phenomenology is an investigation of one's own consciousness by means of introspective awareness. Nonetheless, it can be considered a special sort of science, given that it obtains its data using a rigorous methodology. On the basis of these data, phenomenologists can devise "models" that describe the structures of consciousness. Husserl in fact thought that even the forms of logical judgments can be traced to more basic structures of consciousness. After examining the way that he locates the origin of negation in experiences of phenomenal "disappointment," which result in part from the layered structure of time-constituting consciousness, we turn to Barry Dainton's construction of models of the specious present. One type that is built upon Husserl's writings is a "retentional" model where the objective present is a simple instant, but all the while other recent moments have stacked up in retentional awareness to create the illusion of a present with a durational thickness. In Dainton's own rival "extensional" model, however, the present really does extend for a duration of about a second or so, and all the moments that seem present in fact are. At the end I propose a model of the specious present that is based on Graham Priest's spread hypothesis. It does not vindicate dialetheism; rather, it is merely built upon the assumption that we directly perceive dialetheias of motion. It is both retentional and extensional, since in it the actual present of our conscious activity has a very tiny extensive spread, all while recent prior spreads stack up in our retentional awareness to create the impression of an enduring present. This model has the advantages of explaining the continuity of phases in the specious present while also accounting for experiences of phenomenal disappointment.
Research Interests: Phenomenology, Time-Consciousness, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Philosophy of Time, and 20 moreBertrand Russell, Time Perception, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Temporality, Negation (Logic), Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Shaun Gallagher, Retention, Non-Classical Logics, Specious Present, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, M. Merleau-Ponty, Logic (Classical and Non-standard), The Specious Present, Barry Dainton, Dialetheic Logic, and Rudolf Bernet(Bertrand Russell, Time Perception, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Temporality, Negation (Logic), Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Shaun Gallagher, Retention, Non-Classical Logics, Specious Present, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, M. Merleau-Ponty, Logic (Classical and Non-standard), The Specious Present, Barry Dainton, Dialetheic Logic, and Rudolf Bernet)
(Bertrand Russell, Time Perception, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Temporality, Negation (Logic), Non-Classical Logic, Paraconsistent logic, Shaun Gallagher, Retention, Non-Classical Logics, Specious Present, Dialetheism, Graham Priest, M. Merleau-Ponty, Logic (Classical and Non-standard), The Specious Present, Barry Dainton, Dialetheic Logic, and Rudolf Bernet)
A process philosophical interpretation of Deleuze’s theories of time encounters problems when formulating an account of Deleuze’s portrayal of temporality in The Time-Image, where time is understood as having the structure of... more
A process philosophical interpretation of Deleuze’s theories of time encounters problems when formulating an account of Deleuze’s portrayal of temporality in The Time-Image, where time is understood as having the structure of instantaneity and simultaneity. I remedy this shortcoming of process philosophical readings by formulating a phenomenological interpretation of Deleuze’s second synthesis of time. By employing Deleuze’s logic of affirmative synthetic disjunction in combination with his differential calculus interpretation of Spinoza’s and Bergson’s duration, this phenomenological interpretation portrays time as given to our awareness in immediacy rather than through a continuous process of unfolding. The viability of this alternate approach calls into question the claims that Deleuze is strictly a process philosopher and anti-phenomenologist.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Philosophy of Film, Time-Consciousness, Jorge Luis Borges, and 30 moreGilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Memory Studies, Deleuze, Philosophy of Time, Baruch Spinoza, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Spinoza, Yasujiro Ozu, Deleuze & Cinema, Film, Lewis Carroll, Isabelle Stengers, Memory, Alice in Wonderland, Prigogine, Joseph L Mankiewicz, In the Moment: Improvisation and Time-Consciousness, Borges, Fred Astaire, Deleuze and Guattari, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, Ilya Prigogine, Marcel Carné, Jerry Lewis, Stengers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Flashback, and Kamler(Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Memory Studies, Deleuze, Philosophy of Time, Baruch Spinoza, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Spinoza, Yasujiro Ozu, Deleuze & Cinema, Film, Lewis Carroll, Isabelle Stengers, Memory, Alice in Wonderland, Prigogine, Joseph L Mankiewicz, In the Moment: Improvisation and Time-Consciousness, Borges, Fred Astaire, Deleuze and Guattari, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, Ilya Prigogine, Marcel Carné, Jerry Lewis, Stengers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Flashback, and Kamler)
(Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Memory Studies, Deleuze, Philosophy of Time, Baruch Spinoza, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Spinoza, Yasujiro Ozu, Deleuze & Cinema, Film, Lewis Carroll, Isabelle Stengers, Memory, Alice in Wonderland, Prigogine, Joseph L Mankiewicz, In the Moment: Improvisation and Time-Consciousness, Borges, Fred Astaire, Deleuze and Guattari, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, Ilya Prigogine, Marcel Carné, Jerry Lewis, Stengers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Flashback, and Kamler)
Following the release of Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi (2017), a debate ensued among fans and critics over its portrayal of Luke Skywalker as a broken quitter. Some, like Niatoos Dadbeh of Star Wars Theory, argued that such a version of... more
Following the release of Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi (2017), a debate ensued among fans and critics over its portrayal of Luke Skywalker as a broken quitter. Some, like Niatoos Dadbeh of Star Wars Theory, argued that such a version of Luke was so out of step with his developmental trajectory that Johnson could be said to have failed to uphold his "moral responsibility" to fans who saw the character as a "beacon of hope." Zak Koonce and Craven Moorhaus of the Auralnauts, however, claim that such a Luke is entirely possible, given his background and the precedent set by other reclusive Jedi masters. By exploring Deleuze's Nietzschean philosophy of becoming, we lend further support for Johnson's portrayal by asking if his version of Luke exhibits a power greater than the force, namely, the power of becoming-other.
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For both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, time is the affecting of self by self. Yet, the nature of this self-affection, as well as the temporal structure it produces, is fundamentally different in each case. In Merleau-Ponty’s model, the self... more
For both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, time is the affecting of self by self. Yet, the nature of this self-affection, as well as the temporal structure it produces, is fundamentally different in each case. In Merleau-Ponty’s model, the self ’s variations are united by time’s continuous thrust. However for Deleuze, self variation is far more radical. Our self immediately varies from itself: we are always both ourselves and not-ourselves at every singular moment and not just over the course of multiple successive nows. While for Merleau-Ponty our temporal moments are organically integrated with each other, for Deleuze time is composed of a series of caesuras which are like the Dedekind cuts that constitute a numerical continuity. We will examine (1) how Merleau-Ponty’s organic temporality arises from a subject’s continuously integrated personal identity and (2) how in contrast for Deleuze a continuously disjunctive temporality is produced by the personal non-identity of a differentially composed subject. We then evaluate by asking, which model better explains the phenomenon of selfhood, that is, the appearing of oneself to oneself? Building from Deleuze’s elaborations and examples, we conclude that we appear to ourselves most phenomenally when we experience differences in ourselves, like when upon looking in a mirror, we become shocked by an abruptly noticed sign of age that makes us for a moment unable to recognize ourselves.
Research Interests: Greek Tragedy, Kant, Phenomenology, Kant-studies, Gilles Deleuze, and 17 moreMaurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of the body, Philosophy of Time, Immanuel Kant, Personal Identity, Marcel Proust, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Sophocles, Merleau-Ponty, Cultural Astronomy, Hamlet, Friedrich Holderlin, Arthur Rimbaud, Phenomenology of Time, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, and Holderlin(Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of the body, Philosophy of Time, Immanuel Kant, Personal Identity, Marcel Proust, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Sophocles, Merleau-Ponty, Cultural Astronomy, Hamlet, Friedrich Holderlin, Arthur Rimbaud, Phenomenology of Time, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, and Holderlin)
(Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of the body, Philosophy of Time, Immanuel Kant, Personal Identity, Marcel Proust, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Sophocles, Merleau-Ponty, Cultural Astronomy, Hamlet, Friedrich Holderlin, Arthur Rimbaud, Phenomenology of Time, Phenomenology of time-consciousness, and Holderlin)
A phenomenological method of comics analysis can be useful when we need to uncover the structural features of the comics experience itself. One fruitful application would be in the study of irregular intra-panel rhythms, where the... more
A phenomenological method of comics analysis can be useful when we need to uncover the structural features of the comics experience itself. One fruitful application would be in the study of irregular intra-panel rhythms, where the temporalized divisions are not visibly indicated but rather are only experienced. By means of Gilles Deleuze's notion of rhythmic repetition and his elaboration of it through Olivier Messiaen's theory of 'kinetic' rhythm, we will formulate a conception of visual rhythm as being based on metrical irregularity. We further explicate this concept of irregular rhythm by drawing upon the notion of 'ragged time' in the early jazz musical form, ragtime. We finally test its usefulness by examining how the 'jazzy' rhythms of Cubist-styled panels by Art Spiegelman and Mary Fleener generate an experience of ragged time.
Research Interests: Rhythm, Comics Studies, Phenomenology, Comics, Gilles Deleuze, and 14 moreComics/Sequential Art, Reader Response, Graphic Novels, Deleuze, Jazz Studies, Comics and Graphic Novels, Art Spiegelman, Francis Bacon (Painter), Olivier Messiaen, Ragtime, Visual Rhythm, Thierry Groensteen, Mary Fleener, and Robert Armstrong
This thesis examines Deleuze’s concept of synthetic disjunction and its role in a Deleuzean phenomenology. It analyses especially the phenomenological value of synthetic disjunction in Deleuze’s works on Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Bergson... more
This thesis examines Deleuze’s concept of synthetic disjunction and its role in a Deleuzean phenomenology. It analyses especially the phenomenological value of synthetic disjunction in Deleuze’s works on Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Bergson and also in Deleuze’s phenomenologically relevant writings on painting, cinema and differential calculus. The first half is devoted to phenomena of sensation, and the second part focuses on the temporal phenomena that arise when we are shocked by our own alterations. As a result of its analyses, this study provides a unique and useful account of phenomenal appearings insofar as they initially stand out in their greatest intensity. And in order to render its concepts into a more readily graspable visual format, the text is thoroughly illustrated and flip-book animated with color imagery.
Research Interests: Kant, Logic, Painting, Phenomenology, Gilles Deleuze, and 15 moreHenri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Dada, Philosophy of Time, Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Cinema, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, The Sublime, Dadaism, Dadaism & Surrealism, and Eric Alliez
[Review of Henry Somers-Hall's book, Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide]
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Negation and Difference compares these two thinkers' competing responses to the problems of representation in philosophical systems. The argumentation is skillfully executed, and its conclusion is compelling. It is vital for those... more
Negation and Difference compares these two thinkers' competing responses to the problems of representation in philosophical systems. The argumentation is skillfully executed, and its conclusion is compelling. It is vital for those interested in a careful and balanced cross-analysis of Deleuze and Hegel, and it also serves as a remarkably useful companion to chapters one and four of Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. The text ranges across a wide scope of topics while remaining coherent throughout, covering interesting and rarely combined concepts from philosophy, mathematics, aesthetics, and science. In accordance with the demands of its task, the argumentation on a whole is somewhat complex. Yet the text is well divided and organized, and it keeps the whole picture always within view by consistently summarizing and previewing the parts of the argument. In all, the first part introduces the representational systems and their problems, the second part elaborates on the theoretical bases of Hegel's and Deleuze's solutions, and the third part cross-evaluates them. Chapter one situates Deleuze's transcendental empiricism in the post-Kantian tradition. For Kant, our judgments have a subject-predicate structure that is parallel to the subject-predicate (or subject-property) structure of concepts and of intuited objects. What unifies objects, concepts, and judgments each themselves and all to one another is the a priori unity of a transcendental self. Yet, Deleuze's transcendental empiricism is based on neither the unity of the self nor of the object, for it makes use of a logic of incompossible predication. (Adam is both sinner and innocent when on the verge of deciding to eat the fruit of knowledge.) Chapter two explains how a strict adherence to the principle of identity and the law of excluded middle causes three main problems in Aristotle's and Bertrand Russell's representational systems of classification. Aristotle's highest genus, which is 'being' or 'unity', has no genus above it, so it cannot be defined; and Russell's makeshift solution to the paradox of the set of all non-self inclusive sets weakens his system (problem of the large). Unlike species, individuals in Aristotle's classification are distinguished by accidental and not by essential traits. This creates difficulties for representing individuals, which change throughout time (problem of the small). Also there are cases in the natural world, for example ring species, which cannot be classified using Aristotle's system of division (problem of division). Chapters three and four elaborate on how Deleuze's concept of non-oppositional difference is based on Bergson's continuously-integrated, heterogeneous multiplicity. Deleuze's virtual/actual relation is like topographical phase-space portraits, where we can see all possible ways a dynamic system can behave. The infinity of incompossibly actualizable developments are differentially related yet are continuously integrated. Chapter five accounts for how Hegel's internal dialectic solves problems of representational systems by making use of productive contradiction: from out of a concept arises its contrary, and from out of that opposition emerges a new concept that is not implied in the first pair. So contraries are located within one another, and there is a genetic chain of production of the categories of the understanding. Finite thought like the sort used in Kant's and Aristotle's systems would find such contradictions unthinkable, but Hegel's infinite thought can conceive them in terms of their sublation. Because Deleuze's and Hegel's theories of difference allow for more ambiguous or flexible identities, they solve the three problems of representational systems.
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Research Interests: Jurgen Habermas, Metaphysics of Time, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Gilles Deleuze, and 14 moreFriedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Book Reviews, Book Review, Difference and Repetition, Logic of sense, and James Williams
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Orson Welles considered himself a stage magician. Yet, fakery is not merely a performance art for Welles and Deleuze; it is a source of our personal authenticity. But how might our fakery be productive of our true selves? The power of the... more
Orson Welles considered himself a stage magician. Yet, fakery is not merely a performance art for Welles and Deleuze; it is a source of our personal authenticity. But how might our fakery be productive of our true selves? The power of the false, writes Deleuze, lies at the source of pure becoming. What makes us who we are is the immediate way we differentiate from ourselves. In other words, we have a selfhood that is based on self-difference rather than on self-identity. Yet, it is not so simple as to say we are indeterminate. For, differential selfhood is grounded on what Deleuze calls ‘determinability,’ a concept he uncovers in Kant’s critical revision of Descartes’ cogito argument. Deleuze’s third time synthesis involves a disjunctive synthesis of our ‘before’ and our ‘after,’ although it does not assimilate the two. No lapse of time extends between who we now are and who we are now on the cusp of being: there is a temporal intensity rather than a temporal extensity between our immediate self-differentiations. Because our inquiry is phenomenological, we ask, in what situations does our differential selfhood come to our explicit awareness as a phenomenon? For this we examine Oedipus, Hamlet, and characters from Welles’ films. What we gather from Welles’ interviews and Deleuze’s writings is that our fakery is our determinability and not simply our indeterminacy. Faking ourselves is a way to contra-determine ourselves, in affirmation of the differences within us that make us who we are.
Even the closest friends are radically separated by a distance between them. This distance creates an interval which is like an empty space or a no man’s land; it is the space where friendship takes place. Friendship is the movement that... more
Even the closest friends are radically separated by a distance between them. This distance creates an interval which is like an empty space or a no man’s land; it is the space where friendship takes place. Friendship is the movement that creates meaning in the empty space between friends. According to Blanchot, friendship is a condition for thought, not because we need friends to think, but because the creation of new meaning requires a dialogue across a distance. As thought, philosophy needs to be in dialogue with a distant other, talking to her from the outside, in order to continue her unpredictable discourse. Like Blanchot, Deleuze thinks that friends must maintain a sort of differential distance; yet, friends for Deleuze still stay conjoined in intimate communicative contact. They charm each other with their inexplicit and inexplicable ‘signs’. Deleuze then refers specifically to Blanchot’s idea that friendship is the condition for thought in the “F for fidelity” section of the l’Abécédaire interviews. We then turn to “N for neurobiology” to explain Deleuze’s reasoning for this. Although he never here mentions friendship, he uses the same principles to explain concept-formation, his own transdisciplinary thinking, and his personal relations with artists and scientists. Thus both Blanchot and Deleuze see philosophy as needing to go outside itself to befriend other disciplines.
James Williams’ process-based reading of Deleuze’s earlier writings on time (Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide) provides a convincing account of the integration of the three time-syntheses in... more
James Williams’ process-based reading of Deleuze’s earlier writings on time (Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide) provides a convincing account of the integration of the three time-syntheses in Difference & Repetition. However, Williams must exclude Deleuze’s later work, Cinema II: The Time Image from this analysis, on account of its incompatibility with his process reading. We will instead explore an opposing strategy. First we begin with the cinema book, because it provides cinematic examples illustrating the temporal concepts Deleuze discusses. Particular to our attention are the cited scenes from films by Marcel Carné, Joseph Mankiewicz, and Yasujirō Ozu. These will illustrate the pure past and the empty form of time. To characterize these ideas in terms of ‘pure succession’, we turn to the concept of ‘pure becoming’ in The Logic of Sense, which we interpret in ‘still’ terms on the basis of the concepts of ‘static genesis’ and the logic of ‘synthetic disjunction’ coming later in the text. This allows us to read Deleuze’s synthesis as a purely logical status and not as a process. We then turn to the second and third syntheses of time in Difference and Repetition. Now we may regard these syntheses as being pre-processal, rendering them perfectly compatible with the corresponding ideas in the cinema book. Deleuze’s time, according to our view, is primarily intensive and not extensive. Temporality is given to us without the extending durational passage required for the progressive unfolding of a process.
Although Deleuze is commonly considered an anti-phenomenologist, my project seeks instead to find the phenomenological value to certain of his aesthetical ideas regarding affection and bodily sensation, and I take particular interest in... more
Although Deleuze is commonly considered an anti-phenomenologist, my project seeks instead to find the phenomenological value to certain of his aesthetical ideas regarding affection and bodily sensation, and I take particular interest in the way he explicates these notions through his analysis of paintings, music theories on rhythm, and films. In this presentation, I will examine Deleuze’s critique of phenomenology’s lived body in his Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation and show how his account of the body without organs implies basic principles for an alternate formulation of phenomenal givenness. For this aim, I draw primarily upon Deleuze’s writings on Spinoza’s affection. In his twelfth letter, ‘the letter on the infinite,’ Spinoza presents an intriguing diagram to illustrate his notion of substance’s infinity. By unearthing preformed differential calculus notions in Spinoza’s concept of infinity, Deleuze uses this diagram to explain the purely differential composition of both affection and the body. He does so by showing how the diagram explains two sorts of infinities, extensive and intensive. Extensive bodies are composed by the differential relations between infinitely small partitions, and this is the extensive infinity. The quantitative values of these differential relations are under continual variation on account of shocking collisions with other small bodies, which is the physical basis of our affections. When viewing a work of art, for example, the intensity of the affection is largely determined by the differential relation of the power levels between one infinitely small instant and the next, and this is the intensive infinity. Thus affection and the affected body are both constituted fundamentally by pure differences, because they are differential relations between terms that have ‘vanished’ to the infinitely small. So Deleuze has us think of the diagram, on the one hand, as enclosing an extensive space that is infinitely divisible into simplest extensive bodies, and on the other hand, as being infinitely divisible into a continuous series of differential values representing our body’s intensive range of possible affective variations. These aesthetic concepts can then serve to articulate Deleuzean-phenomenological alternatives to traditional phenomenology’s notions of the ‘lived body’ and of phenomenal objects as being constituted through associative relations of self-samenesses. A phenomenon for Deleuze is the flash of difference communicated between heterogeneous series. The differential physical contact between our body and the work of art corresponds to the differential alteration of composition from one instant of its affection to the next. These momentary flashes of affective intensity are bodily given phenomena. This is an attractive alternative to the ‘flesh’ or ‘fabric’ of Merleau-Ponty’s lived body. For Merleau-Ponty, rather than differential relations being involved in phenomenal appearances, there are three tiers of integrations: (1) the parts of the body work together organically when (2) bringing together integratively the phenomenal parts of our perception, all occurring (3) on the basis of our body already being intimately immersed into our phenomenal world. However, a Deleuze-inspired anti-integrative phenomenology, I will argue, would better explain the intensity of phenomenal experiences.
Conventional phenomenology in a way has something in common with a traditional understanding of rhythm. But is rhythm at its basis simply a repeating pattern that maintains self-sameness during an extent of time? And is a phenomenon... more
Conventional phenomenology in a way has something in common with a traditional understanding of rhythm. But is rhythm at its basis simply a repeating pattern that maintains self-sameness during an extent of time? And is a phenomenon something that is constituted over an extending period of duration, accomplished by means of enduring similarities that are associatively assimilated into a phenomenal object? Or could it rather be that rhythm and phenomena are fundamentally matters of pure difference alone? A Deleuzean phenomenology of the body involves a logic of differential rhythm. Deleuze articulates this sort of rhythm with the theoretical writings of Messiaen and Boulez. These composers challenge the traditional understanding of musical rhythm by defining it as what does not fit predictable self-same metrical patterns. And Deleuze challenges traditional phenomenology by defining the phenomenon as an instantaneous flash of difference communicated between heterogeneous series of differential terms. A Husserlian or Merleau-Pontian phenomenon requires the flow of time. A Deleuzean phenomenon however can only occur before the passive synthesis of time-consciousness has had the chance to homogenize the immediately given differential phenomenal data. We will explore Deleuze’s and more contemporary musical, cinematic, and painted examples of rhythm to offer not merely an interesting way to experience rhythm in these art forms, but also to suggest an alternate form of phenomenological investigation, based on Deleuze’s notion of phenomenal rhythm.
Research Interests: Calculus, Music, Music Theory, Philosophy, Aesthetics, and 68 moreVisual Studies, Perception, Art, Film Studies, Photography, Auditory Perception, Contemporary Art, Rhythm, Time Series, Digital Cinema, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Film, Jurgen Habermas, Metaphysics of Time, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Somatics, Photography Theory, Masochism, Cultural Memory, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Modernism, Philosophy of perception, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, History of photography, Artistic Research, Space and Time (Philosophy), Time Perception, Leibniz (Philosophy), Husserl, Spinoza, Music Perception, Photography (Visual Studies), Jean Rhys, Husserlian phenomenology, Leibniz, Malebranche, Memory, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Stan Brakhage, Dance Research, Rhythm Studies, Boulez Pierre, Bataille, Musical Rhythm Theory, Rhythms, Timing and Rhythm, Boulez, Meter and Rhythm, Embodied knowledge, Horowitz, Fred Astaire, Body Psychotherapy, Michael Gordon, Early Modern Philosophy (Descartes, Vico) History of Scientific and Philosophical Ideas Philosophy and Psychology of Action, and Scott Wollschleger(Visual Studies, Perception, Art, Film Studies, Photography, Auditory Perception, Contemporary Art, Rhythm, Time Series, Digital Cinema, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Film, Jurgen Habermas, Metaphysics of Time, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Somatics, Photography Theory, Masochism, Cultural Memory, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Modernism, Philosophy of perception, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, History of photography, Artistic Research, Space and Time (Philosophy), Time Perception, Leibniz (Philosophy), Husserl, Spinoza, Music Perception, Photography (Visual Studies), Jean Rhys, Husserlian phenomenology, Leibniz, Malebranche, Memory, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Stan Brakhage, Dance Research, Rhythm Studies, Boulez Pierre, Bataille, Musical Rhythm Theory, Rhythms, Timing and Rhythm, Boulez, Meter and Rhythm, Embodied knowledge, Horowitz, Fred Astaire, Body Psychotherapy, Michael Gordon, Early Modern Philosophy (Descartes, Vico) History of Scientific and Philosophical Ideas Philosophy and Psychology of Action, and Scott Wollschleger)
(Visual Studies, Perception, Art, Film Studies, Photography, Auditory Perception, Contemporary Art, Rhythm, Time Series, Digital Cinema, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Film, Jurgen Habermas, Metaphysics of Time, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Somatics, Photography Theory, Masochism, Cultural Memory, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Modernism, Philosophy of perception, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, History of photography, Artistic Research, Space and Time (Philosophy), Time Perception, Leibniz (Philosophy), Husserl, Spinoza, Music Perception, Photography (Visual Studies), Jean Rhys, Husserlian phenomenology, Leibniz, Malebranche, Memory, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Stan Brakhage, Dance Research, Rhythm Studies, Boulez Pierre, Bataille, Musical Rhythm Theory, Rhythms, Timing and Rhythm, Boulez, Meter and Rhythm, Embodied knowledge, Horowitz, Fred Astaire, Body Psychotherapy, Michael Gordon, Early Modern Philosophy (Descartes, Vico) History of Scientific and Philosophical Ideas Philosophy and Psychology of Action, and Scott Wollschleger)
Deleuze is often considered an anti-phenomenologist. He even writes disparagingly of phenomenology’s ‘paltry’ lived-body, which we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Nonetheless, Deleuze still generated an original theory of phenomena. So... more
Deleuze is often considered an anti-phenomenologist. He even writes disparagingly of phenomenology’s ‘paltry’ lived-body, which we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Nonetheless, Deleuze still generated an original theory of phenomena. So rather than determining whether Deleuze was a phenomenologist or an anti-phenomenologist, we might instead attempt to formulate what a Deleuzean phenomenology would be. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomena are possible on account of three levels of harmonic integration: among the parts of the phenomenal world, among our body parts functioning in sensation, and between our body and the world enveloping us. All these overlappings bind us into the flesh of the world. Yet, a Deleuzean phenomenology would be based on precisely the opposite principles: the phenomenal world consists of incompatible differences shockingly forced upon us, all while our body functions disjunctively within itself and with our surroundings. Deleuze characterizes this sort of incohesion by referring us to the Dadaist machinery of Rube Goldberg and Buster Keaton. By showing how these principles allow for an alternate interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s Gestaltist illustrations, we will consider the possibility that not only is a Deleuzean phenomenology possible, it may also be a superior means to account for the phenomenality of phenomena.
Research Interests: Neuroscience, Avant-Garde Cinema, Film Studies, Film Studies, Film Theory, and 43 moreFrench Cinema, European Cinema, Synaesthesia, Film Analysis, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Continental Philosophy, Buster Keaton, Neuroarthistory, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Early Cinema, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Film History, Dada, German Cinema, Phenomenology of the body, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Dada In Europe & New York (Man Ray & M. Duchamp), Merleau-Ponty, Fritz Lang, Somaesthetics, Dadaism, Vision, Stan Brakhage, Olivier Messiaen, Dadaism & Surrealism, Rube Goldberg Machining, Multisensoriality, René Clair, Machinic Assemblages, Percpetion, Blind Vision, and Luce Irigary(French Cinema, European Cinema, Synaesthesia, Film Analysis, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Continental Philosophy, Buster Keaton, Neuroarthistory, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Early Cinema, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Film History, Dada, German Cinema, Phenomenology of the body, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Dada In Europe & New York (Man Ray & M. Duchamp), Merleau-Ponty, Fritz Lang, Somaesthetics, Dadaism, Vision, Stan Brakhage, Olivier Messiaen, Dadaism & Surrealism, Rube Goldberg Machining, Multisensoriality, René Clair, Machinic Assemblages, Percpetion, Blind Vision, and Luce Irigary)
(French Cinema, European Cinema, Synaesthesia, Film Analysis, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Continental Philosophy, Buster Keaton, Neuroarthistory, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Early Cinema, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Film History, Dada, German Cinema, Phenomenology of the body, Cinema, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Dada In Europe & New York (Man Ray & M. Duchamp), Merleau-Ponty, Fritz Lang, Somaesthetics, Dadaism, Vision, Stan Brakhage, Olivier Messiaen, Dadaism & Surrealism, Rube Goldberg Machining, Multisensoriality, René Clair, Machinic Assemblages, Percpetion, Blind Vision, and Luce Irigary)
Research Interests: Musical Theatre, Film Studies, Film Music And Sound, Literature and cinema, Film Analysis, and 50 moreSchutz, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Time-Consciousness, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Jorge Luis Borges, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Henri Bergson, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Postmodernism, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Arendt, Free Will, Heidegger, Cinema, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Husserl, Orson Welles, Late Modernism, Temporality (Time Studies), Husserlian phenomenology, Isabelle Stengers, TIME, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Duration, Fenomenología Hermenéutica Lenguaje Levinas Heidegger Husserl, Phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau Ponty), Joseph L Mankiewicz, Ficciones, Borges, American Musical Theater, Borges, Fred Astaire, Theatre, Musical Theatre, Opera, Patocka, Dance and Musical Theatre, Marcel Carné, Jerry Lewis, Citizen Kane, Phenomenological Philosophy: Husserl, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz(Schutz, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Time-Consciousness, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Jorge Luis Borges, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Henri Bergson, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Postmodernism, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Arendt, Free Will, Heidegger, Cinema, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Husserl, Orson Welles, Late Modernism, Temporality (Time Studies), Husserlian phenomenology, Isabelle Stengers, TIME, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Duration, Fenomenología Hermenéutica Lenguaje Levinas Heidegger Husserl, Phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau Ponty), Joseph L Mankiewicz, Ficciones, Borges, American Musical Theater, Borges, Fred Astaire, Theatre, Musical Theatre, Opera, Patocka, Dance and Musical Theatre, Marcel Carné, Jerry Lewis, Citizen Kane, Phenomenological Philosophy: Husserl, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
(Schutz, Phenomenology, Jurgen Habermas, Time-Consciousness, Continental Philosophy, Time Studies, Jorge Luis Borges, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Henri Bergson, Émmanuel Lévinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Postmodernism, Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Philosophy of Time, Arendt, Free Will, Heidegger, Cinema, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Time Perception, Husserl, Orson Welles, Late Modernism, Temporality (Time Studies), Husserlian phenomenology, Isabelle Stengers, TIME, French phenomenology: Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste and Emmanuel Levinas. Husserl and Heidegger., Duration, Fenomenología Hermenéutica Lenguaje Levinas Heidegger Husserl, Phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau Ponty), Joseph L Mankiewicz, Ficciones, Borges, American Musical Theater, Borges, Fred Astaire, Theatre, Musical Theatre, Opera, Patocka, Dance and Musical Theatre, Marcel Carné, Jerry Lewis, Citizen Kane, Phenomenological Philosophy: Husserl, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
" Deleuze is often considered an anti-phenomenologist. He even writes disparagingly of phenomenology’s ‘paltry’ lived-body, which we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Nonetheless, Deleuze still generated an original theory of phenomena.... more
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Deleuze is often considered an anti-phenomenologist. He even writes disparagingly of phenomenology’s ‘paltry’ lived-body, which we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Nonetheless, Deleuze still generated an original theory of phenomena. So rather than determining whether Deleuze was a phenomenologist or an anti-phenomenologist, we might instead attempt to formulate what a Deleuzean phenomenology would be. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomena are possible on account of three levels of harmonic integration: among the parts of the phenomenal world, among our body parts functioning in sensation, and between our body and the world enveloping us. All these overlappings bind us into the flesh of the world. Yet, a Deleuzean phenomenology would be based on precisely the opposite principles: the phenomenal world consists of incompatible differences shockingly forced upon us, all while our body functions disjunctively within itself and with our surroundings. Both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze express their different views through their divergent readings of quotations attributed to Cézanne, in some cases they read the exact same quotation in opposite ways. We will look then at these Cézanne passages to see how Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze’s philosophies of painting exhibit their very different phenomenal theories; and, we will consider the possibility that not only is a Deleuzean phenomenology possible, it may also be a superior means to account for the phenomenality of phenomena.
Consider when Cézanne speaks of painting his ‘motif’ while rendering Mont Sainte-Victoire. He approaches his visual world as if his eyes were seeing it for the first time, which causes him to encounter a chaos of colors and forms that gradually organize into discernable perceptions. For Merleau-Ponty, Cézanne’s motif is his rendering not just what he sees, but also the way his visual data dynamically organizes by means of his immediate immersion in the world and through the intimate integration of his senses. In this way, he joins the ‘wandering hands’ of nature. To emphasize this, Cézanne clasps his hands together, declaring “this is a motif.” He continues to say that if his painting properly brings together all the visual elements in a way loyal to his activity of perceiving them, then his “painting joins its hands together.” For Merleau-Ponty, this intertwining weaves our organized body into the fabric or flesh of the world.
Deleuze likewise speaks of Cézanne’s motif as an ‘intertwining.’ But it is a different sort. Cézanne says that the painter must decipher the ‘text’ of nature by painting his experience of sensing it. These texts are ‘parallel:’ nature seen (out there) and nature felt (inside us). Like Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze also notes how Cézanne approaches the chaos of sensations with the eyes of a newborn child. But for Deleuze, for the painter to render and convey a sensation, this would not arise if the painter’s inner workings were organizing the sensations into recognizable objects. Note how on our routine journey to work each day, we might recognize everything but arrive without noticing anything. Only if something out of the ordinary happens, like a traffic accident, will we take note of what we sense. But also, Deleuze is not interested merely in depicting the raw chaos of what is given to us, so a mess like Pollock will not produce sensations either, perhaps like how radio static soon fades from our attention. What interests Deleuze more is the way that our sensory systems modulate the sensory givens, rendering them under a varied form, putting them together in ways that are not implied in how they are given. Cézanne developed his technique of rendering not what he saw, but the way its parts modulated into a new field of visual differences. Hence Cézanne once painted a grey wall green. For Deleuze this is because when we have sensations, it is not because our perceptions organized into coherent objects. We have sensations when we shockingly encounter a world that impresses differences on us, which because of the disorganization of our perceptual faculties, we then vary into a new set of differences. Hence Cézanne’s motif, for Deleuze, is the mechanism that injects differential forces of variation into our sensation. We and the world do not intertwine in the sense of interlacing fingers. Cézanne clasping hands are more like a sudden clap sending shock waves throughout his body. Such shocks are what make things phenomenally stand-out in their appearance.
"
Deleuze is often considered an anti-phenomenologist. He even writes disparagingly of phenomenology’s ‘paltry’ lived-body, which we find in Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. Nonetheless, Deleuze still generated an original theory of phenomena. So rather than determining whether Deleuze was a phenomenologist or an anti-phenomenologist, we might instead attempt to formulate what a Deleuzean phenomenology would be. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomena are possible on account of three levels of harmonic integration: among the parts of the phenomenal world, among our body parts functioning in sensation, and between our body and the world enveloping us. All these overlappings bind us into the flesh of the world. Yet, a Deleuzean phenomenology would be based on precisely the opposite principles: the phenomenal world consists of incompatible differences shockingly forced upon us, all while our body functions disjunctively within itself and with our surroundings. Both Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze express their different views through their divergent readings of quotations attributed to Cézanne, in some cases they read the exact same quotation in opposite ways. We will look then at these Cézanne passages to see how Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze’s philosophies of painting exhibit their very different phenomenal theories; and, we will consider the possibility that not only is a Deleuzean phenomenology possible, it may also be a superior means to account for the phenomenality of phenomena.
Consider when Cézanne speaks of painting his ‘motif’ while rendering Mont Sainte-Victoire. He approaches his visual world as if his eyes were seeing it for the first time, which causes him to encounter a chaos of colors and forms that gradually organize into discernable perceptions. For Merleau-Ponty, Cézanne’s motif is his rendering not just what he sees, but also the way his visual data dynamically organizes by means of his immediate immersion in the world and through the intimate integration of his senses. In this way, he joins the ‘wandering hands’ of nature. To emphasize this, Cézanne clasps his hands together, declaring “this is a motif.” He continues to say that if his painting properly brings together all the visual elements in a way loyal to his activity of perceiving them, then his “painting joins its hands together.” For Merleau-Ponty, this intertwining weaves our organized body into the fabric or flesh of the world.
Deleuze likewise speaks of Cézanne’s motif as an ‘intertwining.’ But it is a different sort. Cézanne says that the painter must decipher the ‘text’ of nature by painting his experience of sensing it. These texts are ‘parallel:’ nature seen (out there) and nature felt (inside us). Like Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze also notes how Cézanne approaches the chaos of sensations with the eyes of a newborn child. But for Deleuze, for the painter to render and convey a sensation, this would not arise if the painter’s inner workings were organizing the sensations into recognizable objects. Note how on our routine journey to work each day, we might recognize everything but arrive without noticing anything. Only if something out of the ordinary happens, like a traffic accident, will we take note of what we sense. But also, Deleuze is not interested merely in depicting the raw chaos of what is given to us, so a mess like Pollock will not produce sensations either, perhaps like how radio static soon fades from our attention. What interests Deleuze more is the way that our sensory systems modulate the sensory givens, rendering them under a varied form, putting them together in ways that are not implied in how they are given. Cézanne developed his technique of rendering not what he saw, but the way its parts modulated into a new field of visual differences. Hence Cézanne once painted a grey wall green. For Deleuze this is because when we have sensations, it is not because our perceptions organized into coherent objects. We have sensations when we shockingly encounter a world that impresses differences on us, which because of the disorganization of our perceptual faculties, we then vary into a new set of differences. Hence Cézanne’s motif, for Deleuze, is the mechanism that injects differential forces of variation into our sensation. We and the world do not intertwine in the sense of interlacing fingers. Cézanne clasping hands are more like a sudden clap sending shock waves throughout his body. Such shocks are what make things phenomenally stand-out in their appearance.
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Research Interests: Aesthetics, Art History, Art, Art Theory, Contemporary Art, and 29 moreModern Art, Painting, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, Jurgen Habermas, Continental Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, History of Art, Levinas, Phenomenology of the body, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Phenomenology of the Body (Philosophy), Merleau-Ponty, Francis Bacon (Painter), Paul Cezanne, Stan Brakhage, Fine Art, Elements, The Art of Paul Cézanne, Paul Cézanne, Cézanne, and Cezanne(Modern Art, Painting, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, Jurgen Habermas, Continental Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, History of Art, Levinas, Phenomenology of the body, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Phenomenology of the Body (Philosophy), Merleau-Ponty, Francis Bacon (Painter), Paul Cezanne, Stan Brakhage, Fine Art, Elements, The Art of Paul Cézanne, Paul Cézanne, Cézanne, and Cezanne)
(Modern Art, Painting, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, Jurgen Habermas, Continental Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, History of Art, Levinas, Phenomenology of the body, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Phenomenology of the Body (Philosophy), Merleau-Ponty, Francis Bacon (Painter), Paul Cezanne, Stan Brakhage, Fine Art, Elements, The Art of Paul Cézanne, Paul Cézanne, Cézanne, and Cezanne)
Deleuze’s critical stance against phenomenology will here be considered as a constructive critique. Implicit to Deleuze’s attack on traditional phenomenology are concepts which may be employed in a broader effort to construct a... more
Deleuze’s critical stance against phenomenology will here be considered as a constructive critique. Implicit to Deleuze’s attack on traditional phenomenology are concepts which may be employed in a broader effort to construct a Deleuze-inspired phenomenology. I will focus primarily on the Deleuzian phenomenological value of the anti-integration of phenomenal parts. To explain Deleuze’s position, I will first examine how Merleau-Ponty illustrates his integrative principles by means of Gestaltist examples. I then will show how a Deleuzian phenomenology would interpret these same figures differently on the basis of phenomenal anti-integration.
Research Interests:
Deleuze regarded Bergson’s thinking to be radically opposed to phenomenology. Deleuzean Bergsonists, for example, attack Husserl’s account of inner time consciousness on the grounds that its linearity misconstrues duration as spatial. Yet... more
Deleuze regarded Bergson’s thinking to be radically opposed to phenomenology. Deleuzean Bergsonists, for example, attack Husserl’s account of inner time consciousness on the grounds that its linearity misconstrues duration as spatial. Yet for both Bergson and Husserl, internal duration proceeds by a flowing of sorts. A nd this unbroken durational flow is fundamental in Bergson’s thinking. Deleuze, however , reads Bergson to have implied that duration is based on something that is not spatial or even properly temporal. Bergson’s duration, for Deleuze, is at its foundation self-di fference. And Deleuze bases his first two “syntheses of time” on Bergsonian duration, yet bot h are a-temporal in a way. In the first case, we are to consider time in terms of an instan taneous “living present” which is not time as flowing, but is instead the present moment wanti ng to break out and away from itself. The second synthesis is based on the past being contemp oraneous with the present, and in this way time is understood a-chronologically. It is not that there is first a present moment that secondarily flows into the past. Rather, any presen t moment is already crystallized with the past even as it first emerges. So we suggest that D eleuzean Bergsonists can pose an even more radical opposition to phenomenology. Phenomena are normally conceived as arising through a synthesis in the flow of time consciousne ss. But from Deleuze’s read of Bergsonist duration, we find that phenomena could n ot possibly arise this way. Phenomena are shocks of difference whose intensity dissipates when they are secondarily homogenized in the flow of time.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Music, Kant, Rhythm, Painting, Gilles Deleuze, and 2 moreBaruch Spinoza and The Sublime(Baruch Spinoza and The Sublime)
(Baruch Spinoza and The Sublime)
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Research Interests: Wilderness (Environment), Posthumanism, Computational Neuroscience, Digital Signal Processing, Human Enhancement, and 19 moreEmergentism, Digital and Analog Communication, Emergence, MANDELBROT, Noise, Randomness, Cognitive Enhancement, Neurocomputing, Primitivism, Neurocomputation, Paul Shepard, Anders Sandberg, Mental Uploading, Dreske, Analog Computation, Digital Computation, Fineberg, Nick Bostrom, and Julian Savulescu(Emergentism, Digital and Analog Communication, Emergence, MANDELBROT, Noise, Randomness, Cognitive Enhancement, Neurocomputing, Primitivism, Neurocomputation, Paul Shepard, Anders Sandberg, Mental Uploading, Dreske, Analog Computation, Digital Computation, Fineberg, Nick Bostrom, and Julian Savulescu)
(Emergentism, Digital and Analog Communication, Emergence, MANDELBROT, Noise, Randomness, Cognitive Enhancement, Neurocomputing, Primitivism, Neurocomputation, Paul Shepard, Anders Sandberg, Mental Uploading, Dreske, Analog Computation, Digital Computation, Fineberg, Nick Bostrom, and Julian Savulescu)
Brief summaries of selected sections of Graham Priest’s Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is, chosen for their relevance to a study of the logic of Gilles Deleuze
Research Interests:
Middle East Technical University, Course, 2018 Fall.
In this session, we discuss the course topic: Falsity in Deleuze's Philosophy of Truth and Philosophy of Cinema. We also get a basic introduction to Deleuze as a philosopher.
In this session, we discuss the course topic: Falsity in Deleuze's Philosophy of Truth and Philosophy of Cinema. We also get a basic introduction to Deleuze as a philosopher.
Research Interests:
In this session we examine Deleuze's novel reading of Bergson's philosophy of movement and becoming in relation to cinema and its early history. (Some of the film history material is from Ahmet Gürata.)
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Deleuze, and 15 moreFilm History, Philosophy of Time, Cinema, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Deleuze & Cinema, Cinematography, Méliès, Robert Altman, Thomas Edison, Lumières, D. W. Griffith, Barry Dainton, Philosophy of Becoming, and Étienne Jules Marey
In this class we examine montage and intense variation. Some slides come from Ahmet Gürata.
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In this session, we examine Affect, Percept, and Action images in cinema.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Samuel Beckett, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, and 14 moreFilm History, Affect Theory, Cinema, Bergson, Affect/Emotion, Affect Studies, Affect (Cultural Theory), Deleuze & Cinema, Affect, Cinema Studies, Sergio Leone, Anthony Mann, Deleuze and Guattari, and Intersections Between Art and Philosophy (Expecially Bergson, Deleuze and Henry) and Art and Music(Film History, Affect Theory, Cinema, Bergson, Affect/Emotion, Affect Studies, Affect (Cultural Theory), Deleuze & Cinema, Affect, Cinema Studies, Sergio Leone, Anthony Mann, Deleuze and Guattari, and Intersections Between Art and Philosophy (Expecially Bergson, Deleuze and Henry) and Art and Music)
(Film History, Affect Theory, Cinema, Bergson, Affect/Emotion, Affect Studies, Affect (Cultural Theory), Deleuze & Cinema, Affect, Cinema Studies, Sergio Leone, Anthony Mann, Deleuze and Guattari, and Intersections Between Art and Philosophy (Expecially Bergson, Deleuze and Henry) and Art and Music)
In this brief lesson we transition to the time-image by first noting some important elements of what Deleuze calls the 'crisis of the action-image,' in Italian Neo-Realism and French New Wave. The beginning slides are by Ahmet Gürata.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, French Cinema, Film Analysis, Gilles Deleuze, and 15 moreItalian Cinema, Deleuze, Film History, Second World War, World War II, Cinema, Deleuze & Cinema, French New Wave, Italian neorealist cinema, Film and Media Studies, Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Studies, Films, Roberto Rossellini, and Vittorio De Sica
In this lesson, we examine Deleuze's application of Bergson's layers of memory to cinematic time.