Animal body,inhuman face

In the present essay, I apply various concepts associated with the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Fe´lix Guattari to an inquiry concerning what I call the ‘ontology’ of musical creation and performance. Specifically, I utilize both the theory and approach of ‘schizoanalysis’, which so pervasively marks co-operative works such as Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoid becomes the model for my musician-performer. This ‘schizoid musician’ is the one who has the ability to apprehend that of a ‘musical space’, a central theme of the essay. Some additional clarification is needed as well. Although I surely offer this essay to the reader as a thoroughly honest, and hopefully provocative, attempt, it is also something of an indebted experiment. That is, the ‘after’ of my essay's title-as in ‘after Deleuze and Guattari’-has essentially two meanings. The first, and obvious meaning: I write after Deleuze and Guattari in that I inherit, to whatever extent, their thought. I grapple with their ideas. The second, and perhaps more unconventionally risky (because potentially easily misconstrued as representative of a kind of blind fidelity): I write after Deleuze and Guattari in the way that a painter paints ‘after’ another painter, in the way that a composer composes ‘after’ another composer, and so on. In one sense, the selective utilization of a sensibility associated with the schizophrenic condition provided the 'silent partner' and underlying guiding influence for Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Thus, this essay is, in part, a modest attempt at yet another 'fold' (to use a term of Deleuze's) in a philosophical inquiry-some kind theoretical exemplar of ‘difference and repetition’ (or, difference in repetition). This indebtedness notwithstanding, the reader will notice the scholarly utilization of Deleuze and Guattari also in terms of a silent partner, a guiding influence, and less in terms of a source that is explicitly acknowledged or referenced. This was an intentional part of the experiment from the beginning. Of course, other thinkers, on the other hand, will come to occupy such a space in the essay.     

Concept and Politics in Derrida and Deleuze

Abstract

This paper points to significant similarities between the political orientations of Deleuze and Derrida. Derrida's appeal to a pure form of existing concepts (absolute hospitality, pure forgiveness, and so on) parallels Deleuze and Guattari's distinction between relative and absolute ‘deterritorialisation’. In each case, the absolute form of the concept is a condition of the possibility of change.     

The Present's Historical Task: Kracauer as Reader of Collingwood

Siegfried Kracauer's reading of the work of R.G. Collingwood illuminates the crisis point in the relation between philosophy, history and how the present is thought. In this paper I argue that Kracauer's dismissal of Collingwood illuminates a misunderstanding of the latter's philosophical project, and takes no account of a certain affinity between the two thinkers. Collingwood not only shared Kracauer's view that a philosophically oriented historical investigation of the past might offer some hope for the present, but also had a fuller grasp of the philosophical implications of the ambivalent relation between historical time and the present than Kracauer gave him credit for.     

Mutant Enunciations: Feminist Practices and the Anoedipal

Feminist theory and practice, and in particular Julia Kristeva's theory of the semiotic in language and Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger's explication of the matrixial, provide a basis from which to extend the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari concerning domains of signification that operate beyond the Oedipal structure. In the first part of this paper, I will discuss some relationships that may be traced between the ideas of these theorists and processes in creative practice that have the potential to constitute an alternative stratum of subjectivity not wholly dependent on Oedipalisation. This will be followed by a brief analysis of two paintings by West Australian artist Linda Banazis incorporating what I have termed the ‘X Function', an additional and transversal system to those outlined in Michael O'Toole's (1994) model of semiotic analysis of visual texts. The X Function provides a means of mapping nomadic or non-Oedipal currents, those ‘non-discursive' or resistant dimensions of texts which deny fixity or closure of interpretation.     

Ideology and Post-structuralism after Bernard Stiegler

What is the objective of ideology critique today? A unique answer to this question can be found in the work of Bernard Stiegler: the object of ideology critique is stupidity. Stiegler’s work will be situated with regard to the study of ideology and post-structuralism, reframed as respective versions of a dichotomy between critical and neutral theories, to show how Stiegler’s conception of ideology encompasses both. How he thinks ideology ‘after’ post-structuralism will be explored through his reading of Deleuze and Guattari. First, by seeing how Stiegler capitalizes upon the theoretical developments of Deleuze and Guattari to rethink the notion of ideology. Second, by seeing how this understanding of ideology is folded back on their work in order to discern how post-structuralism can be critiqued by a theory of ideology that utilizes its views. From the perspective of his reading of desire in Deleuze, Guattari and Freud, Stiegler shows how ideology destroys the desire to rethink ideas, and enforces stupidity. Third, after Stiegler’s theoretical labour, we arrive at a notion of ideology dichotomized between the critical and the stupid, tasking critique with the invention of new forms of desire, and the struggle against stupidity.     

Deleuze and the liberal tradition: normativity,freedom and judgement

This paper is a critical review article of Paul Patton's book, Deleuze and the Political , and analyzes the relationship between Deleuze and the 'liberal' tradition of political philosophy. It focuses on three concepts drawn from the liberal tradition - normativity, freedom and judgment - and in each case shows how these concepts are capable of being transformed in light of Deleuze's philosophy. For Deleuze, a truly 'normative' principle must be a principle of creation as well as critique: it must not only provide norms for condemning abuses of power, but also a means for transforming norms that have themselves become abuses of power. From a Deleuzian perspective, the normative is thus seen as the condition for the production of the new. The liberal notion of 'negative freedom' in turn finds itself transformed into the stronger notion of 'critical freedom' (Tully), which entails the freedom to critique and create, to transform (and not merely pursue) one's own interest and desires. This entails, finally, an exercise of a kind of judgement outside pre-existing rules or norms that would be truly creative of the new (e.g. the production of new rights). A concluding section of the concept of the 'social imaginary’ shows how Deleuze's work might contribute to a transformation and rejuvenation of the liberal tradition itself.     

Habermas and the pragmatics of communication: a Deleuze–Guattarian critique

The intention in this article is to explore, explicate, and, ultimately, critique Jurgen Habermas' communication theory. Drawing on the pragmatics of Deleuze and Guattari we will propose that Habermas' defence of the importance and priority of communicative action is problematic to the extent that it implicitly involves the issuing of an imperative order that cannot be accounted for within the normative framework that he envisages. In other words, we will be suggesting—with the help of Deleuze and Guattari—that Habermas, undoubtedly against his best intentions, precipitates, what we will call, a strategic levelling of communicative action.     

Tricking Posthumanism: From Deleuze to (Lacan) to Haraway

A lineage has been drawn between the immanent philosophy articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the work of Donna Haraway, most notably by the nomadic feminist and immanentist Rosi Braidotti. However, while containing certain parallels via the process nature of their ontologies, upon further inspection, such an equivocation is unwarranted on the grounds that it fails to remain nuanced in distinguishing the precise ‘mechanism’ or midwife that gives birth to the continued proliferation of the flux of becoming. This disparity is exposed through the erection of a homology using Lacanian psychoanalysis that eases the passing from immanentism to Haraway by showing that the latter inscribes the obverse of L'Autre (the big Other) into the field of becoming unravelling privileged channels of desire. This results in an ingenuity that can never be pinned down by the signifier and, further, actively works to subvert it through ploy.     

Undignified Thoughts After Nature: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

Abstract

This paper seeks to redress the marginalization of Adorno in environmental philosophical discourse. Kate Soper describes two opposing ways of conceiving nature. There is the redemptive "nature-endorsing" paradigm that lays claim to the intrinsic value or "otherness" of nature. Conversely, the "nature-sceptical" approach denies that we can access originary, untouched nature. This paper argues that the significance of Adorno's treatment of natural beauty lies in how he brings these approaches together. In writings that resonate with the dual connotations of Sebald's phrase "after nature", Adorno both affirms the skeptical point that we cannot transcend a human history alienated from nature as well as retaining redemptive hope wherein art "after" nature seeks creative possibilities from out of the very ruins of history marked by nature's destruction.     

Notes toward a nomad subjectivity: The poetics of Gu Cheng (1956–1993)

In this paper, Deleuze and Guattari's notions of desiring‐production and nomad subjectivity are applied to the work of the contemporary People's Republic of China poet Gu Cheng, a writer who attempted to formulate an ‘aimless’ self engaged in endless becoming. In addition, the concept of ‘Mao style’ proposed by Li Tuo is discussed with regard to Mao Zedong's Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Art Literature in order to demonstrate the repressive nature of the dominant discourse in China after 1949, and to show that its essential purpose was to trap individual desiring‐production within the restricted scope sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party. The features of Gu Cheng's evolving model of subjectivity are discussed and evaluated in terms of their resistance to the effects of Mao style. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the reasons for Gu Cheng's failure to arrive at a positive conception of nomad subjectivity.     

In Search of a Home: In Honour of Agnes Heller on her 75th Birthday

Abstract

One of the many themes to which Agnes Heller's philosophy returns again and again is the theme of the home of the moderns. Although not necessarily her central philosophical theme, nonetheless, it opens onto the existential and multi-dimensional nature of the human condition in modernity, which her work permanently addresses.     

From clichés to slogans: towards a Deleuze–Guattarian critique of ideology

When thinking about ideology as a form of practice, Deleuze and Guattari show how ideology can circulate through the social as cliché, where clichés are themselves ideological tools that function to order the world or ideologically pattern social action and social relations. Against clichés Deleuze and Guattari insist on the power and political significance of what they call slogans, where slogans or the practice of sloganizing can imply a critique of the forms of ideology we encounter in everyday life. Put differently, a Deleuze–Guattarian critique of ideology implies a clearing-away of the clichés that ideologically play through the canvas of our social–political world.     

Nature,Dialectics and Emancipatory Politics

Ecofeminist theory and politics, which originally grew out of the radical feminist movement and peace and environmental movements of the early 1970s, is composed of many voices. Since the 1970s, ecofeminists have emerged in such places as India, with the work of Vandana Shiva, and Australia, with the work of Ariel Salleh, among others, expanding beyond their Western origins. Like feminists, ecofeminists do not claim a single theoretical position and practice. And like feminism, ecofeminism is constantly changing, motivated, in part, by the lively theoretical debates within it. The purpose of this interview is to introduce the reader to ecofeminist philosophy, to explore what ecofeminism is, what ecofeminists' central debates are about, where they are going, and what ecofeminism's possibilities are as a theoretical tool for understanding the underlying structures of social and ecological problems.

Barbara Holland‐Cunz has contributed to ecofeminist theory and politics since the 1970s. She has been an active member in the feminist movement, the anti‐militarist movement, and the anti‐nuclear movement in Germany since 1978. She holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Political Science from Frankfurt University, where she currently teaches in the Women's Studies center in the Social Sciences Department. Holland‐Cunz' research areas include political theory, philosophy of nature, feminist politics and utopias, and the history of ecofeminism. The courses she teaches include: feminist theory and epistemology, gender in political theory, political strategies and Utopian thought, and ecology and the philosophy of nature. Holland‐Cunz lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and is an Editor of CNS.     

Passion's re-territorializations: mapping the mixed semiotics of unsafe homo passional assemblages

This paper conducts a mixed semiotics of unsafe homo passional assemblages. It begins with an exposition of Deleuze and Guattari's instructions for mapping the multidimensional circuitry of assemblages along the generative and transformative poles. Unsafe sex is a line of desiring movement involving expressive matter from the pick-up machine. After HIV/AIDS, the pick-up machine's de-territorialised movements have been problematised, their a-semiotic matter becoming a testimony to the limits of the imperative to practice safe sex. These assemblages have been overcoded as being unconscious and ineffable; however, this paper traces their mixed semiotics involving the a-signifying particle-signs of the pick-up machine as well as conscious lines of desiring movement involving the segmentarity and mirror vision of a recognisable social identity as a gay man. In all of these passional assemblages the pick-up machine's nomadic movements have become buckled by a number of sovereign, consuming microfascisms. The lines of movement have reached their threshold limit, weakening their capacity for making new connections for new lines of becoming and creative mutation. Throughout the paper it is argued that the macropolitics of safe sex has failed to grasp the possibilities for new passages that can be drawn from the molecular soup of the pick-up machine and its micropolitics of perception, affection and conversation. It is not necessary to prohibit its lines of movement as new possibilities for homo sexual culture will emerge by drawing on affective potentials drawn from the pick-up machine in conjunction with new affective material.     

Hume Reads Freud: Empiricism as Rhetorical Event

Abstract

The two competitive currents in French philosophy initiated by Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze tackle the difference between empiricism and idealism in contrary motion. In Derrida, the move is toward a critique of representation. In Deleuze, it is toward recovery of the real. Nevertheless, this paper nominates their meeting in a kind of ‘radical empiricism’. Both Derrida and Deleuze engage with empiricism at certain points in their work, although many who go by that label would be surprised to hear it.     

Providence Lost: ‘September 11’ and the History of Evil

Abstract

This paper discusses the philosophical significance of ‘September 11’ by relating it to attempts that have been made throughout the history of philosophy to read particular events as symbols of conceptual change. It draws especially on Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought and Giovanna Borradori's dialogues with Derrida and Habermas, in her Philosophy in a Time of Terror, to relate ‘September 11’ to Kant's versions of Progress, Providence and Cosmopolitanism.     

The age of apology: evidence from the Israeli public discourse

At the time of its presentation, Derrida's 'Force of law' represented deconstruction's perhaps most direct statement on the possibility of justice and its most explicit engagement with law. The ensuing responses to that paper have typically focused on deconstruction's position regarding the force and authority of law, and especially on what is taken as Derrida's theory of justice. As such, 'Force of law' is often discussed in isolation to mainstream legal philosophy or is otherwise understood to represent a radical counter to that tradition. It is possible to take a different direction, however, by considering the event of that paper's presentation and reception in relation not only to the existing disciplines of legal studies, but also to the problematic of discipline itself. Re-reading some of the work of contemporary legal philosophy in the light of that problematic may thus enable a certain questioning of the disciplinary divisions whose very institution underscores the 'radical' nature of deconstruction's 'critique' of traditional understandings of law. Such a re-reading may even allow a speculation upon a certain (trans)disciplinarity of deconstruction, reconsidering the latter's relation to traditions.     

Rancière and revolution

This paper explores what role Rancière's work can play in the struggle for a more democratic world. It highlights the strength of Rancière's conception of democracy, which clearly identifies democracy as a popular disruption of the prevailing police order. This order claims to have assigned a proper role to all parts of society. Democracy for Rancière is when an element emerges that has not been taken account of and demonstrates the police order's claim to be false. Among the many benefits of this way of understanding democracy, it upsets any easy association between hegemony and democracy – as in Laclau & Mouffe – and it refuses utterly the ideological fusing of democracy, capitalism, and the state offered by the liberal-democratic-capitalist consensus. However, Rancière's approach also introduces significant limits on democracy because it denies that democracy can ever do more than disrupt the prevailing order. It does not allow for the possibility that democracy can grow and spread to the point that it becomes pervasive in the polity. This paper uses the case of the Egyptian uprising to show how this limitation closes off important political possibilities. The paper argues that Deleuze & Guattari's theorisation of revolution, when used carefully, is a necessary corrective to Rancière's too-restricted concept of democracy     

Deleuze and literature: Metaphor and indirect discourse

This paper deals primarily with Deleuze's work on literature? but also looks briefly at related ideas in the books on cinema. Deleuze has often concentrated on what he calls ‘American‘ literature, particularly in Critique and clinlque. The first part of the paper seeks to outline some of the main elements of this particular literary field for Deleuze. The paper then goes on to show how the general rejection of metaphor that informs Deleuze's work on literature can be more precisely defined as a theory of free indirect discourse. The concept of free indirect discourse is? as Frangois Zourabichvili has shown, at the heart of Deleuze's work? aesthetic or otherwise. For example, the idea of the percept functions as an aesthetic application of free indirect discourse, and Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 suggest that this form of enunciation represents a new aesthetic cogito to which cinema is ideally suited.     

The Loss of Nature in Axel Honneth's Social Philosophy. Rereading Mead with Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

This paper analyses the model of interaction at the heart of Axel Honneth's social philosophy. It argues that inter action in his mature ethics of recognition has been reduced to intercourse between human persons and that the role of nature is now missing from it. The ethics of recognition takes into account neither the material dimensions of individual and social action, nor the normative meaning of non-human persons and natural environments. The loss of nature in the mature ethics of recognition is made visible through a comparison with Honneth's initial formulation of his project. As an anthropology of intersubjectivity combining the teaching of the German philosophical anthropologists and G.H. Mead, his first model sought to ground social theory in the natural preconditions of human action. The last part of the article argues that a return to Mead's theory of practical intersubjectivity informed by Merleau-Ponty's germane theory of intercorporeity provides essential conceptual tools to enable the integration of the natural and the material within the theory of recognition.