This special issue on posthumanist perspectives on affect seeks to create a platform for thinking about the intersection of, on the one hand, the posthumanist project of radically reconfiguring the meaning of the “human” in light of the critiques of a unified and bounded subjectivity and, on the other, the insights coming from recent scholarship on affect and feeling about the subject, sociality, and connectivity. Posthumanism stands for diverse theoretical positions which together call into question the anthropocentric assertion of the (...) human as a distinctive, unique and dominant form of life – in turn, the concept of affect has been linked with ideas of increasing and decreasing energetic intensities, which underlie, but for some also precede, processes of individuation and subjectivation.The contributors to this issue consider critically the vistas opened by affect studies and by posthumanism. Coming from diverse disciplinary traditions, including literature, philosophy, critical sociology, visual arts, and heritage studies, the articles contribute to the four thematic idioms of this issue in an attempt to structure a dialogical space on posthumanist perspectives on affect and on affect-based politics. Questions of environmental governance, the critique of speciesism, the formation of cross-species solidarity, the politics of the “inhuman”, biopolitics and necropolitics form the intellectual mosaic of this issue. Finally, we pose the question of “academic affects”, in circulation in the researcher's encounter with her others – humans, insects, ghostly presences or inanimate objects – and we ask how these affects, including anger and mourning, but also joyful affirmation, are brought to bear on the process of writing. (shrink)

Through an example of the prohibition against dating in a technical school in southwest China in 1978, this article analyzes how three intersecting forces - the ideology of socialist collectivism, the structure of the work unit system and the socialist sovereign ownership of the body - account for sexual repression in the Maoist period in China. Rather than being an ahistorical, essential component of Maoist socialism, sexual repression (psychic and social) was a historically specific and complex phenomenon. The transformation of (...) sexual repression at a historical moment took the form of an assemblage of the return of love discourse and an emergent desire-centered subjectivity in the great transformation from Maoist socialism to the post-Mao reform period. (shrink)

The Guantanamo detention facility, from its early days an emblem for human rights abuses, is a space where legal subjectivity of detainees is contested or even permanently suspended. This essay argues that we should look for the underlying rationale for this treatment not in the politicians who pursue intelligence, security, and strategic interest, or indeed even revenge for 9/11, but rather in the logic—or the ontology—that drives the present political and legal system. This is not to say, of course, that (...) politicians play no role, or that they are mere ‘victims’ of social and political power relations—far from it; yet, it has to be acknowledged that the foundational assumptions on which the existing system operates create conditions of possibility for such degrading actions and exclusionary politics. This paper will first explore these philosophical foundations that enable such an understanding of exclusionary legal subjectivity as we see practiced in Guantanamo, amongst other places; secondly, it will search for an alternative logic of legal subjectivity as a ‘foundation’ for rights. Gilles Deleuze’s notion of ‘becoming’ as a potentially facilitative practice for an ‘open’ notion of legal subjectivity, as well as Alain Badiou’s account of ethics and evil, which points to a more ‘inclusive’ yet ‘situational’ understanding of human rights, will prove particularly useful here. (shrink)

Deleuze's relationship to Kant is intricate and fundamental, given that Deleuze develops his transcendental philosophy of difference in large part out of Kant's work. In doing so he utilises the moment of the sublime from the third Critique as the genetic model for the irruption of the faculties beyond their capture within common sense. In this sense, the sublime offers the model not only for transcendental genesis but also for aesthetic experience unleashed from any conditions of possibility. As a result, (...) sensation in both its wider and more specifically artistic senses (senses that become increasingly entwined in Deleuze's work) will explode the clichéés of human perception, and continually reinvent the history of art without recourse to representation. In tracing Deleuze's ‘‘aesthetics’’ from Kant we are therefore returned to the viciously anti-human (and Nietzschean) trajectory of Deleuze's work, while simultaneously being forced to address the extent of its remaining Idealism. Both of these elements play an important part in relation to Deleuze's ‘‘modernism’’, and to the discussion of his possible relevance to contemporary artistic practices. (shrink)

This article responds to Schulz's criticisms of an earlier paper published in Educational Philosophy and Theory. The purpose in this paper is to clarify and extend some of my earlier arguments, to indicate what is unfortunate (i.e. what is lost) from a non‐charitable, modernist reading of Lyotardian postmodernism (despite its weaknesses), and to suggest what new directions are emerging in science education from efforts to move beyond an either/or dichotomy of foundationalism and relativism.

This paper follows recent debates around theorizations of ‘affect’ and its distinction from ‘emotion’ in the context of non-representational theories to exemplify how the ontologization of affects creates important openings of ethical and political potential in educators’ efforts to make productive interventions in pedagogical spaces. The ontological orientation provided by NRT has two important implications for educational theory and practice. First, it exposes the indeterminacy and inventiveness of affective capacities of bodies, illustrating how diverse socio-materials events are variously enrolled in (...) everyday school life processes of differentiation. Second, it emphasizes an affirmative account of the ethics and politics of affect in which connections and relations forged between bodies, things and spaces constitute the basis of new configurations of affects and emotions in schools. (shrink)

This paper follows recent debates on the ontological turn in the social sciences and humanities to exemplify how this turn creates important openings of methodological and political potential in education. In particular, the paper makes an attempt to show two things: first, the new questions and possibilities that are opened from explicitly acknowledging the methodological and political consequences of the ontological turn in education—e.g. concerning agency, transformation, materiality and relations; and second, the importance of being clear about how educators and (...) educational researchers conceptualize ontology and engage with debates on the ontological turn in related disciplines. The paper sketches some of the methodological and political implications of the ontological turn for education, focusing in particular on the concept of learning. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is important for educators in democratic education to understand how the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the United States and around the world can never be viewed apart from the affective investments of populist leaders and their supporters to essentialist ideological visions of nationalism, racism, sexism and xenophobia. Democratic education can provide the space for educators and students to think critically and productively about people’s affects, in order to identify the implications of different affective (...) modes through which right-wing populism is articulated. Furthermore, this paper points out that ‘negative’ critique of the affective ideology of right-wing populism is not sufficient for developing a productive counter politics. An affirmative critique is also needed to set alternative frames and agendas which endorse and disseminate alternative concepts and affective practices such as equality, love and solidarity. These ideas provide critical resources to democratic education for developing a culture and process of democracy that transcends the negativity of mere critique of either right-wing populisms or inadequate forms of democracy. (shrink)

This article explores how Jean François Lyotard reflects on affect as unrepresentable in relation to contemporary affect theory and specifically post-Deleuzian perspectives and non-representational theories suggesting that we need to invent new theoretical ways of addressing our more-than-textual, multisensual worlds. The essay leans on this conversation to make a political and pedagogical intervention into the terrain of addressing affect in the classroom. It is discussed how Lyotard adds his own contribution to the work of other affect theorists, who are not (...) saying that if we find the right vehicle—literature, art, etc.—we can translate or represent affect, but rather that pedagogy is itself always already an affective event that exceeds representation. Pedagogies of ineffability, as it argued, are those pedagogical practices that do not fall pray into the rhetorics of standardization and homogenization in the name of ‘emotional intelligence’ or ‘effectiveness’, but rather invent affective spaces of learning in which educators and students are opened precariously to the unknown. (shrink)

When all the people of the world finally speak the same language and commune in the same message or the same norm of reason, we will descend, idiot imbeciles, lower than rats, more stupidly than lizards. The same maniacal language and science, the same repetitions of the same in all latitudes–an earth covered with screeching parrots. The goal of instruction is the end of instruction, that is to say invention. Invention is the only true intellectual act, the only act of (...) intelligence. The rest? Copying, cheating, reproduction, laziness, convention, battle, sleep. Only discovery awakens. Only invention proves that one truly thinks what one thinks, whatever that may be. (shrink)

Prompted by what is seen as a missing analysis in the discussions about passion and affect in education, this essay attempts to clarify and provide a context for understanding the contribution of Foucault in the discourse of passion. In particular, the author traces the politics of passion in Foucault's work. A ‘politics of passion’ is the analysis that challenges the cultural and historical emotional rules with respect to what passion is, how it is expressed, who gets to express it and (...) under what circumstances. It is argued that a discussion of Foucault's ideas on passion provides a way of sharpening and clarifying his politics on affect, particularly what is relevant to individual and collective emotional control in education. (shrink)

Using insights from the tradition of via negativa and the work of Emmanuel Levinas, this paper proposes that unknowability can occupy an important place in teaching and learning, a place that embraces the unknowable in general, as well as the unknowable Other, in particular. It is argued that turning toward both via negativa and Levinas offers us an alternative to conceptualizing the roles of the ethical and the unknowable in educational praxis. This analysis can open possibilities to transform how educators (...) think about the goals of education in two important ways. First, creating spaces for embracing unknowing in educational settings is an act of ethical responsibility that recovers a sense of the Other and his/her uniqueness. Second, rethinking the value of unknowing in the classroom may inspire in students and teachers a sense of vigilance, responsibility and witnessing. Unknowing is an act of embracing otherness and presents a curious element of redemption; in the lack of knowledge, the meaning of its absence is found. (shrink)

The present paper theorises white discomfort as not an individual psychologised emotion, but rather as a social and political affect that is part of the production and maintenance of white colonial structures and practices. Therefore, it is suggested that white discomfort cannot be critically addressed merely in pedagogic terms and conditions within schools and universities. By foregrounding white discomfort in broader terms, the aim of the paper is to provide a more holistic and dynamic account which opens up a realm (...) that situates the pedagogisation of white discomfort within the broader decolonising project of disrupting white colonial structures and practices. The paper calls for both a decolonising and a critical affective approach to pedagogies of discomfort that would focus on examining and addressing strategically how white discomfort comes to be experienced and dismantled within broader affective, material and discursive assemblages of race, racism and whiteness. (shrink)

This paper aims to queer evidence‐based practice by troubling the concepts of evidence, knowledge and mental illness. The evidence‐based narrative that emerged within biomedicine has dominated health care. The biomedical notion of ‘evidence’ has been critiqued extensively and is seen as exclusive and limiting, and even though the social constructionist paradigm attempts to challenge the authority of biomedicine to legitimate what constitutes acceptable evidence or knowledge for those experiencing mental illness, biomedical notions of evidence appear to remain relatively intact. Queer (...) theory offers theoretical tools to disrupt biomedical norms and challenges biomedical normativity to indicate how marginalisation occurs when normative truths about mental health classify those who differ from the norm as ‘ill’ or ‘disordered’. Queer theory's emphasis on normativity serves the political aim to subvert marginalisation and bring about radical social and material change. Reference will be made to mental health subjects within each discourse by indicating how the body acts as a vehicle for knowing. Deleuzian notions of the rhizome are used as metaphor to suggest a relational approach to knowledge that does away with either/or positions in either biomedical, or queer knowledge to arrive at a both/and position where the biomedical, constructionist and queer are interrelated and entangled in needing the other for their own evolution. However, queer does not ask for assimilation but celebrates difference by remaining outside to disrupt that which is easily overlooked, assumed to be natural or represented as the norm. The task of queer knowledge is to do justice to the lives lived in the name of evidence‐based practice and demands that we consider the relations of power where knowledge is produced. This pursuit creates different knowledge spaces where we identify new intersections that allow for socially just understandings of knowing or evidence to emerge. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with an aspect of Deleuze and Guattari's thought which has not been duly analyzed: systematicity. More specifically, it deals with their conception of the system in three co-authored major works: What is Philosophy?, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These works are of renewed interest because they tease out, each in its own way, a particular type of system. Regardless of whether it has a philosophical import, a botanical reference, a social dimension, or a libidinal investment, the (...) system that Deleuze and Guattari advocate is allegedly a hyper-dynamic system that resists closure. Thus, in an interview with Didier Eribon, Deleuze points out that philosophy is 'an open system' and then, referring to A Thousand Plateaus, he further observes that what he and Guattari 'call a rhizome is also one example of an open system'. The purpose of this essay is not merely to explore how the system in the works of these two prominent poststructuralists is conceived, how it is structured, and how it works, but also to show how it is only superficially open. Paying a special attention to Deleuze and Guattari's exegesis on capitalism, I argue that the proposed system is cynical and ultimately untenable. Key Words: capitalism • Gilles Deleuze • Félix Guattari • open system • philosophy • total system. (shrink)

This paper examines and contrasts the Chinese notion of ‘inside-outside connectivity’ emphasized in Taijiquan studies with French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘Body without Organs.’ Pursuing this dialogue while relating this to sport redresses a lack of novel thought and linkages with contemporary thought in Chinese scholarship, and most interestingly for sport, opens new lines of inquiry that help redefine our bodies as holistic sites of performance.

Lodged in an impasse between questions of environmental justice and modes of capitalisation in the green economy, indeterminacy is a vulnerable and porous relation. Pollution activates a potentiality in the organism to be otherwise, to generate certain kinds of tumours, mini-deaths or mutations. Toxicity has an intermediary status that launches a mobility of effects that is often fragmented through sense organs, affirming forms of non-identity in biopolitical relations. Organisms are receptive to such bodily reconfigurations precisely because they are open to (...) the material communication of the world. In contrast to the “hidden labour” of indeterminacy in capitalist modes of capture, this article crafts an analytics of indeterminacy as an interjection in the politics of environments. Through dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico and military bees, two economies of indeterminacy are discussed. Drawing on Georges Bataille’s notion of political economy, I argue that what is required is an economy of radical inequivalence; an excessive engagement with the possibilities of indetermining forces to make fleeting marks. (shrink)

Wolf Totem is not a novel which advocates ‘molar’ wolf characteristics such as violence, brutality and bloodthirstiness, and ‘molar’ wolf laws such as the law of the jungle and the law of profiting at others’ expense, but a novel which reveals to readers a brand new life experience, different affects possessed by the ‘molecular’ wolf, and the becoming-wolf of human beings. Becoming-wolf is not to imitate the above-mentioned characteristics of the ‘molar’ wolf, but to see or imagine what affects the (...) ‘molecular’ wolf has, and make the life force or the assumed life force possessed by the ‘molecular’ wolf transverse a person, so that he or she can also have those affects. Becoming-wolf is to find a line of flight between man and wolf, to get rid of all the restraints imposed by the Confucian culture on the law-abiding, abjectly obedient people, and thus regaining the force of the ‘impersonal, inorganic’ life, so as to become different by endless desiring productions, and enhance mankind's power. (shrink)

Academics from diverse disciplines are recognizing not only the procedural ethical issues involved in research, but also the complexity of everyday “micro” ethical issues that arise. While ethical guidelines are being developed for research in aboriginal populations and low-and-middle-income countries, multi-partnered research initiatives examining arts-based interventions to promote social change pose a unique set of ethical dilemmas not yet fully explored. Our research team, comprising health, education, and social scientists, critical theorists, artists and community-activists launched a five-year research partnership on (...) arts-for-social change. Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada and based in six universities, including over 40 community-based collaborators, and informed by five main field projects, we set out to synthesize existing knowledge and lessons we learned. We summarized these learnings into 12 key points for reflection, grouped into three categories: community-university partnership concerns, dilemmas related to the arts, and team issues. In addition to addressing previous concerns outlined in the literature, we identified power dynamics hindering meaningful participation of community partners and university-based teams that need to be addressed within a reflective critical framework of ethical practice. We present how our team has been addressing these issues, as examples of how such concerns could be approached in community-university partnerships in arts for social change. (shrink)

In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories (...) of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals’ engagement with everyday projects when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face’s absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of the Deleuzian concept of `nomad thought' within the context of postcoloniality and indigenous politics. I argue that Deleuze's deconstruction of coherent and self-identical subjectivity through this concept disallows the possibility of effective indigenous politics through its lack of accountability to a `politics of location', its implicit reproduction of a universalized western subject, and its delegitimation of `experience' and `local knowledge'. I investigate these dynamics in Deleuze's work, and also in deployments of the Deleuzian figure (...) of the nomad and of `nomad thought' by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Patton. As a counterpoint to Deleuze, I discuss a number of feminist and postcolonial writers who recuperate concepts such as `experience' and `local knowledge', yet without lapsing into essentializing discourses. Their work enables robust versions of indigenous politics, and it is by adopting such approaches that feminist and postcolonial theory can move forward in politically accountable ways. (shrink)

Recent discussion about the future of mission has engaged with concepts such as missio Dei, polycentrism, Christendom and glocalisation. In order to provide a philosophical response to these and to introduce a new conversation partner, this article explores key ideas from the nomadic theory of Rosi Braidotti. Notions such as the embodied subject, the rhizome and various forms of becoming could be of benefit to the evolving multilogue about mission futures, and an initial attempt is made to show their relevance (...) to the task of reforming an approach to cross-cultural mission usually associated with Christendom and the power of the West. (shrink)

Recent theoretical and philosophical movements within the study of material culture are more carefully attending to the variety of ways in which human artefacts, institutions, and cultural developments extend, shape and alter human cognition over time. Material Engagement Theory in particular has set out to map, explore and understand the relational nature of mind and material world as can be read through cultural artefacts. Within the context of MET, the neurological concept of metaplasticity has been expanded to include the affective (...) domains of technology, materials, and things in the neurological development and architecture of the plastic human mind; a ‘transactional’ relationship between a plastic mind and a plastic material world that are correlated at the ontological level. The challenges of mapping this metaplasticity of mind lie in understanding how the mind and material culture should be understood in relation to the constantly changing lifeworlds of humans over time; the ecological, social, technological and environmental contexts that form the historical specificity of cognitive development. This paper explores how the historical specificity of metaplasticity can be made tangible through the study of material culture, focusing upon the particular activity of oil painting. It will be argued that paintings can provide clues to the historical specificity of the mind that crosses the lifeworld of human action; the technological, phenomenological, philosophical, material, and social conditions underpinning the creation of a painted mark. Drawing from a range of sources that have a root within a Deleuzian process philosophy, the paper builds an account of painting that can be read as expressing the encultured and historical manipulation of paint as an expressive material in itself; an action rendered visible that express the historical emergence of mind. (shrink)

In such 3D virtual environments (3DVEs) as Second Life, one can ‘be’ re-created as avatar in whatever form one wants to be, facilitated by extensive beauty and cosmetic industries to help the residents of this world achieve a particular kind of glamorous image – limited only by their imaginations and Linden Dollar accounts. Yet, others in 3DVEs are working hard to re-create their avatars to be replicas of their ‘offline’ selves, appearing as they do in actuality. Such phenomena provide a (...) rich opportunity to explore the cultural contexts of ‘self-making’, the process of ‘becoming’ and the transformative, often transgressive, processes of ‘beauty practices’ as bodily praxis and serious play. Drawing on their international ethnographic research undertaken in Second Life, the authors explore the phenomenon of image, affect, subjectivity and representation in this alternative arena. We focus specifically on three interrelated and paradoxical aspects of self-making in this 3D virtual world: first, the ways in which many of our respondents described their avatar personae as symbolically representing their ‘authentic inner selves’; second, the ways our respondents used photography and video to verify and authenticate these ‘inner selves’, through capturing representations of their avatar bodies in action; and, third, the ways ‘authenticity’, for many of our respondents, depended on their avatar image aligning as closely as possible with their bodily appearance off-screen. The concept of what residents of Second Life understand as constituting the ‘authentic inner self’ both in and outside of the virtual world becomes particularly pertinent here. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Deleuze’s treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major figures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is destined to failure (...) because of the affinity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute affirmation of life, Spinoza’s principle that “all determination is negation,” as well as Hegel’s dialectical conception of negation, suggest that affirmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his “logic of difference” allows for an affirmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuze’s interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return as “selective being.” Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsche’s own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuze’s position on nihilism. (shrink)

This paper mounts a philosophical defence of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus by interpreting it from three perspectives: that of Freud, Jung, and Deleuze and Guattari. The latter's concept of becoming-animal is offered as a leading perspective which reveals the deep philosophical significance of the drama, belying the claims of those critics who have dismissed it as bogus or banal. This interpretation also allows Equus to be seen as an exemplary illustration of what Deleuze and Guattari mean by their intriguing (...) concept of becoming-animal, and throws fresh light on this fascinating but difficult notion. (shrink)

By melodic landscape, this paper points to natural milieus such as mountains whose motifs are caught up in contrapuntal relations. With Merleau-Ponty, the structure of the world is a symphony, and the production of life which implicates both organism and environment as unfurling of Umwelt is ‘a melody that sings itself’. For the Chinese culture, mountains have been deemed virtuous in Confucianism, immortal by Daoists, and spiritual for a Buddhist to reach a substrate level of pure stream of a-subjective consciousness. (...) A Chinese painter-poet within the ‘mountain-water’ genre would consider mountains as performance of events, a concert of vibration of light, shape and sound, movement and rest. Insofar as art is to create energy transfer, Chinese artists of mountains aim at concerting with nature as organised by rhythms and conspecifics, unfolding contrapuntal melodies with all kinds of counterpoints. As Deleuze and Guattari's notion of refrains are the three forces or tempos of chaos, earth and world confronting/converging one another, this paper endeavours to find out, first, how Deleuze and Guattari's geological, organic and alloplastic stratifications can be put alongside mountains, animals, plants and arts, and second, how this notion can contribute to our new appreciation of the way Chinese mountains in arts can give out music. (shrink)

The scope of the essay is limited by the ideas behind the mechanisation of desire as conceptualised in The Large Glass by Marcel Duchamp. This glass-based installation depicts a convoluted mechanism, as the full-title of the work suggests, representing The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even. Using tropes and figures from his earlier studies, the artist designed a machine for the production of desire, rendering the unconscious mechanical and dynamic. The paper aims to present selected aspects of the installation, (...) including mechanical reproduction (1), technological fetishism (2), transparency (3), as well as to discuss its significance with reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs (4). The interpretive force of the machine metaphor in the work of Duchamp is analysed in the context of integrative and non-integrative attitudes to technology. (shrink)

Responding to Ike Kamphof’s “Webcams to save nature: Online space as affective and ethical space,” this essay considers the further contextualization of Kamphof’s analysis using the idea of agencement and the provocation to consider further the politics of affect.

: Drawing on several feminist and anti-racist theorists, I use the trope of the vampire to unravel how whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality feed on the same set of disavowals—of the body, of the Other, of fluidity, of dependency itself. I then turn to Jewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories (1991) for a counternarrative that, along with Donna Haraway's reading of vampires (1997), retools concepts of kinship and self that undergird racism, sexism, and heterosexism in contemporary U.S. culture.

Drawing on several feminist and anti-racist theorists, 1 use the trope of the vampire to unravel how whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality feed on the same set of disavowals—of the body, of the Other, of fluidity, of dependency itself. I then turn tojewelle Gomez's The Gilda Stories for a counternarrative that, along with Donna Harauiay's reading of vampires, retools concepts of kinship and self that undergird racism, sexism, and heterosexism in contemporary U.S. culture.

Insects and ‘the swarm’ as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as ‘drone swarms’, which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be ‘robots’ as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfighters understood as swarms: insect metaphors for non-centrally organised problem-solvers that will become technologies of racialisation. As such, contemporary feminist (...) analysis requires an analysis of the politics of life and death in the insect and the swarm, which, following Braidotti (2002), cannot be assumed to be a mere metaphor or representation of political life, but an animating materialist logic. The swarm is not only a metaphor but also a central mode of biopolitical and necropolitical war, with the ‘terrorist’ enemy represented as swarmlike as well. In analysing the relations of assemblage and antagonism in the war ontologies of the drone swarm, I seek inspiration from what Hayles (1999, p. 47) describes as a double vision that ‘looks simultaneously at the power of simulation and at the materialities that produce it’. I discuss various representations and manifestations of swarms and insect life in science/speculative fiction, from various presentations of the ‘Borg’ in Star Trek (1987–1994, 1995–2001, 1996), Alien (1979) and The Fly (1958, 1986) to more positive representations of the ‘becoming-insect’ as possible feminist Utopia in Gilman's Herland (2015 [1915]) and Tiptree's Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1989 [1976]). Posthuman warfare also contains the possibilities of both appropriating and rewriting antagonisms of masculine and feminine in the embodiment of the subject of war in the swarm. This piece seeks to analyse new ways of feminist theorising of the relations of power and violence in the embodiment of war as the swarm. (shrink)

A central claim of Deleuze's reading of Bergson is that Bergson's distinction between space as an extensive multiplicity and duration as an intensive multiplicity is inspired by the distinction between discrete and continuous manifolds found in Bernhard Riemann's 1854 thesis on the foundations of geometry. Yet there is no evidence from Bergson that Riemann influences his division, and the distinction between the discrete and continuous is hardly a Riemannian invention. Claiming Riemann's influence, however, allows Deleuze to argue that quantity, in (...) the form of ‘virtual number’, still pertains to continuous multiplicities. This not only supports Deleuze's attempt to redeem Bergson's argument against Einstein in Duration and Simultaneity, but also allows Deleuze to position Bergson against Hegelian dialectics. The use of Riemann is thereby an important element of the incorporation of Bergson into Deleuze's larger early project of developing an anti-Hegelian philosophy of difference. This article first reviews the role of discrete and continuous multiplicities or manifolds in Riemann's Habilitationsschrift, and how Riemann uses them to establish the foundations of an intrinsic geometry. It then outlines how Deleuze reinterprets Riemann's thesis to make it a credible resource for Deleuze's Bergsonism. Finally, it explores the limits of this move, and how Deleuze's later move away from Bergson turns on the rejection of an assumption of Riemann's thesis, that of ‘flatness in smallest parts’, which Deleuze challenges with the idea, taken from Riemann's contemporary, Richard Dedekind, of the irrational cut. (shrink)

This essay explores the symbiotic relationship between European modernity, its vision of woman and water. The union of these three metaconcepts is consecrated by the Ovidian story of Narcissus and his other, Echo. The West finally found itself completely through Hegel, the Ur-narcissist, who explains the immutable link between that European monopoly, history (by which he means the potential for becoming modern), and the sea. The narcissism of modernity is the great theme of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, (...) which shows how the bourgeoisie seeks to remake the entire world in its own image. Psychoanalysis, through the writings of Ferenczi, joined in cementing the connection, likening woman to the primal sea to which the male ever yearns to return. And Foucault suggests a potential conclusion from this metaconceptual constellation: that Man, a Western creation, may well disappear like a face drawn on a sandy beach. (shrink)

In order to understand how Deleuze's method of dramatization is ‘not privileging mankind in any way’, this article turns to the figure of the marionette as it is discreetly, but consistently, developed thorough Deleuze's books. Inspired by Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre, this marionette figure claims for a rhizomatic approach to the subject, defined by the lines it draws into space and exercising its freedom in the present of Aion through spatio-temporal dynamisms similar to those of Leibniz's monads. The strange (...) freedom developed by marionettes also leads to an examination of Nietzsche's ‘eternal return’, which is at the core of Deleuze's elaboration of the method of dramatization. Combining Nietzsche's eternal return with the characteristics of Deleuzian marionettes then requires us to revisit the famous concept of ‘becoming’: becomings are selective, both methodologically and ontologically. (shrink)

Inspired by Ursula Le Guin's ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, contemporary feminist writing in the social sciences and the humanities has been characterised by a strong renewal of interest in storytelling, as is evidenced by the works of Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway among others. How can storytelling grow with and beyond its literary origin to become a political and heuristic tool? And how does the Anthropocene – our specific geologic epoch – require the renewal of the means of (...) expression of such an old tool as storytelling, so that it becomes a human and nonhuman process? To answer those questions, Deleuze's and Haraway's takes on ‘fabulation’ are intermingled along three lines: the part played by storytelling in the construction of earthly knowledges, the imbrication of speculation and politics, and the nonhuman dimension of fabulation that allows for the liberation of forces of life repressed by an anthropocentric approach. (shrink)

While the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of ‘body without organs’ is developed alongside their critique of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is also developed alongside their critique of Christianity, most poignantly in the sixth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus. Here Deleuze and Guattari quote Antonin Artaud in order to show how ‘the judgment of God weighs upon and is exercised against the BwO’. In order to understand this relationship between judgement of God and the BwO, this essay explores Deleuze's critiques of Christianity (...) in his earlier works and concludes that the BwO, much like Artaud's own poetry, is developed in contrast to an internalised form of Christianity. (shrink)

I here distinguish dissensual from consensual corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the grounds that the former is more concerned to organize (or portray) corporate-civil society disagreement than it is corporate-civil society agreement. In doing so, I first conceive of consensual CSR, and identify a positive and negative view thereof. Second, I conceive of dissensual CSR, and suggest that it can be actualized through the construction of dissent enabling, rather than consent-oriented, public spheres. Following this, I describe four actor-centred institutional theories—i.e. (...) a sociological, ethical, transformative and economic perspective, respectively—and suggest that an economic perspective is generally well suited to explaining CSR activities at the organizational level. Accordingly, I then use the economic perspective to analyse a dissent enabling public sphere that Shell has constructed, and within which Greenpeace participated. In particular, I explain Shell’s employment of dissensual CSR in terms of their core business interests; and identify some potential implications thereof for Shell, Greenpeace, and society more generally. In concluding, I highlight a number of ways in which the present paper can inform future research on business and society interactions. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconsider and explore the ontoepistemology of student engagement in higher education as part of a democratic education, going beyond neo-liberal groundings. This is urgent as the concept of student engagement seems to be taken for granted and used uncritically in higher education. In addition, higher education is affected by, and under pressure from, different global and societal forces, which raises questions about the purpose of education. In our exploration, we mainly draw on the (...) philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and his co-writers Felix Guattari and Claire Parnet, but also Karen Barad and writers who are inspired by these theories. We present four arguments on which we elaborate: Rethinking power relations, Questioning linearity and how to use goals, Appreciating pedagogical relationships as multiple voices and becoming-multiple-others, and Considering assemblages, rhizomes and lines in student engagement. These arguments open up, as we argue, the poss... (shrink)

We welcome Raymond et al.s invitation to further discuss the pragmatics of relational thinking in sustainability science. We clarify that relational approaches provide distinct theoretical and methodological resources that may be adopted on their own, or used to enrich other approaches, including systems research. We situate Raymond et al.s characterization of relational thinking in a broader landscape of differing approaches to mobilizing relationality in sustainability science. A key contribution of relational thinking in the process-relational, pragmatist and post-structural traditions is the (...) focus on the generation and use of concepts. This focus is proving methodologically useful for sustainability scientists. We caution against viewing the generation of concepts purely in terms of applying the knife to divide components. Relational thinking offers alternatives more congruent with complexity: away from an external actor cutting away at the world with an either/or logic, towards an immersed actor contributing generatively within it using a both/and not only logic. The pragmatics of relational thinking will vary according to purposes. We describe two possible pathways for using relational thinking in research practice - (i) working forwards from relations, and (ii) working backwards from existing concepts - and discuss how relational thinking can contribute to complexity-oriented visions of solutions-oriented sustainability science. (shrink)

In times of the Anthropocene, we are in need of philosophical anthropology, revisiting the question concerning the human condition. I suggest rethinking what one may call ‘human transcendence’ in terms of a responsivist paradigm. Drawing on Heidegger and Plessner, the idea is that we should think of the eccentric or ecstatic position of the human in terms of something we undergo, instead of it being a human capability or something we do. It is a gift, emplacing us to the time-space (...) of responsive embodied existence. The paper will follow this agenda in five steps. Having introduced what I take to be the challenge for a timely ontology, I will unfold the problem entailed in the very idea of philosophical anthropology according to Heidegger. I then focus on Heidegger’s (hidden) rapprochement to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropology, recalling Plessner’s analysis of laughter as a bodily expression displaying the ‘eccentric positionality’ of the human. I suggest rephrasing this kind of transcendence in a responsivist paradigm: Humans are responsive beings. (shrink)

Why does a cell phone have a screen? From televisions and cell phones to refrigerators, many contemporary technologies come with a screen. The article aims at answering this question by employing Emmanuel Levinas’ notions of the Other and the face. This article also engages with Don Ihde’s conceptualization of alterity relations, in which the technological acts as quasi-other with which we maintain relations. If technology is a quasi-other, then, I claim, the screen is the quasi-face. By exploring Levinas’ ontology, specifically (...) what can be identified as his tool analysis, as well as his notion of the face, a new understanding of contemporary technologies can be extracted. Some of these technologies hardly fit into the Heideggerian notion of the hand as the main interface to artifacts. Instead they require the face. Levinas’ notion of the face is analyzed from an ontological perspective and developed in conjunction with the screen. As the screen serves as a quasi-face, it enables the construction of quasi-other technological artifacts. (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari’s Thousand Plateaus includes some useful concepts to understand technologies and their relations to humans as individuals and as a society. This article provides an introduction to their notions of machine and becoming and places them in the context of technological use in general, with a special focus on the cellphone. The concept of machine exceeds the technological context, yet it can be still relevant to technologies, especially digital ones. The concept of becoming assists in better understanding co-shaping (...) processes in which a technology and its users change in tandem. Becoming is analyzed as a set of five characteristics: [1] transduction, a change process in both the user and the technology; [2] rhizome, no starting or end point; [3] molecularity, small movement or change that can create a big difference; [4] partial simulation, creating a non-identical copy; and [5] anti-memory, forgetting the past. Based on this analysis, the concept of becoming-mobile is introduced as a new way of understanding the interrelations between humans and their cellphones. Becoming-mobile can be further developed either with Deleuze and Guattari’s own concepts such as nomadicism or with “external” concepts such as postphenomenology’s embodiment and new mobility studies’ virtual mobility. Machine, becoming, and becoming-mobile address some basic questions in philosophy of technology, thereby enabling us to refer to Deleuze and Guattari as philosophers of technology. (shrink)

This is the first of two special issues and the articles are grouped according to two themes: This first issue will feature articles that share a theme we call Technologies and the Political, while the second issue will feature the theme Subjectivities. However, we could equally consider them exercises in provincialization in the (counter)factual register in the first issue, and by affective historiography as conceptual-empirical labor(atory) in the second issue. What we have generally asked of all authors is to consider (...) that the relation between science and society is often heavily influenced by and identified in the intermediary figurations portrayed in the genre of science fiction. (shrink)

This paper introduces Deleuze’s philosophy of becoming in a system theoretic framework and proposes an alternative ontological foundation to the study of systems and complex systems in particular. A brief critique of systems theory and the difficulties apparent in it is proposed as an introduction to the discussion. Following is an overview aimed at providing access to the ‘big picture’ of Deleuze’s revolutionary philosophical system with emphasis on a system theoretic approach and terminology. The major concepts of Deleuze’s ontology—difference, virtuality, (...) multiplicity, assemblages, quasi-causation, becoming, intensity and progressive determination are introduced and discussed. Deleuze’s work is a radical departure from the dogma of western philosophy that guides the foundations of science and systems theory. It replaces identity with difference and being with becoming; in other words, it provides systems theory with an ontological ground based on change, heterogeneity and the inexhaustible novelty-producing process that underlies all phenomena. The conceptual tools made available by this philosophy seem to capture the fundamental aspects of complexity and complex systems much better than the current conceptual system that is based on static transcendent ontological entities. (shrink)

This article is intended to work on a number of different levels. First it is concerned with the brain-become-subject as hypothesized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their book What is Philosophy?. It is concerned with demonstrating the convergence between Deleuze and Guattari's work and the claims of some contemporary neuro-biological theories of consciousness. In particular, I will be comparing Deleuze and Guattari's hypothesis to the work of Gerald Edelman and Daniel Dennett. Second, it is my contention that the (...) shared themes of this convergence amount to the renewal of a paradigm in the understanding of human consciousness and its relationship to the body, which I have elsewhere called `the new Bergsonism'. The emphasis in the text on themes such as duration, material connectedness and immanence, Becoming, multiplicity, selection and so on, is taken to be self-evidently Bergsonian. The primary task of this particular article is, then, to establish a careful technical demonstration of the existence of a shared set of themes and concepts. I have made this demonstration more concrete by placing it within the context of a discussion of the affective dimensions of the experience of social idiosyncrasy (as defined by Adorno and Horkheimer). My wider agenda is that this demonstration of shared themes in poststructuralism and neuro-science should contribute towards a more general attempt to establish a neo-Bergsonian paradigm at the heart of a new sociology of affect. (shrink)