The Fold is a book of practical philosophy that takes a radical new approach to aesthetics. Laura U. Marks calls this philosophy "enfolding-unfolding aesthetics," based in ideas derived from Gilles Deleuze and others (G.F.W. Leibniz, David Bohm, and Édouard Glissant) that the universe is folded in on itself. She proposes a theory of mediation as contact and connection across the folds and a set of embodied methods for detecting such cosmic connections. In drawing out this aesthetics, Marks considers the embodied (...) and sensuous dimensions of engaging with audiovisual works and works of art-dimensions that Marks suggests are composed of the very folds that compose everything and everyone: all living beings, from humans to particles, sandwiches to stars, technologies, thoughts and images, in the present, the past, and the future. Making use of art and film, with a focus on African diaspora and Arab cinema, Marks opens ways to strengthen connections to the cosmos and to better trace processes of becoming that are immanent within the fold. (shrink)

Often, political theories of the subject detach the subject from nature or else reduce the subject to a mere aggregate of natural features. Consequently, many attempts to articulate theories of the subject purport to preserve political theoretical concepts such as freedom, normativity, or responsibility by means of disjoining the subject from its environment. This article proposes a new theory of the ecologically conditioned subject. Developing the concept of companion ecologies, the article employs three examples – architecture, the human microbiome, and (...) indigenous Amazonian ontologies – to show how theorizing the subject at all necessitates theorizing her ecological conditions, as well. Companion ecologies do not refer merely to our environmental conditions, then. The term also functions as a referent. Ultimately, companion ecologies reveal that the individuation and formation of the subject is a process that takes place, paradoxically, only because of the ecological plurality underlying it. From this, I derive a minimalist theory of the subject for which subjects are materially and temporally extended and causally distributed morphogenetic sites, which emerge only in the context of interactive, multiscalar, and overlapping companion ecologies. (shrink)

The concept of the line of flight is used with striking regularity throughout A Thousand Plateaus where it plays a vital role in connecting the other conceptual innovations of the book, including the concepts of the assemblage and the machine. Despite its importance, Deleuze and Guattari never offer a direct definition of the concept, and the reader of A Thousand Plateaus is left to discern its meaning from its various uses. This is especially frustrating for those whose interest in the (...) text is political and who wish to use the conceptual framework of the book to analyse the socio-political assemblages in which they live. In response to this issue, this paper offers a clear and concise introduction to the concept of the line of flight. Furthermore, by analysing the way in which Deleuze and Guattari use this concept in their political analyses of feudalism and capitalism, this article illuminates the more general meaning of the concept of the line of flight through the more specific question of its usage in Deleuze and Guattari's attempt to think a post-capitalist future. (shrink)

We introduce the working concept of “affective arrangement.” This concept is the centerpiece of a perspective on situated affectivity that emphasizes relationality, dynamics, and performativity. Our proposal relates to work in cultural studies and continental philosophy in the Spinoza–Deleuze lineage, yet it is equally geared to the terms of recent work in the philosophy of emotion. Our aim is to devise a framework that can help flesh out how affectivity unfolds dynamically in a relational setting by which it is at (...) the same time modulated in recurring ways. With this orientation, this article contributes to the interdisciplinary study of situated affectivity and to the theoretical and conceptual unification of distinct strands of research from several disciplines. (shrink)

This article explores some of the ways in which the conceptual apparatus of A Thousand Plateaus, and especially its machinic metaphysics, can be connected to recent developments in computer modelling and social simulation, which provide new tools for thinking that are becoming increasingly popular among philosophers and social scientists. Conversely, the successful deployment of these tools provides warrant for the flat ontology articulated in A Thousand Plateaus and therefore contributes to the ‘reversal of Platonism’ for which Deleuze had called in (...) his earlier works, such as Logic of Sense. The first major section offers a brief exposition of some key concepts in A Thousand Plateaus in order to set the stage for the second and third major sections, which argue that the fabrication of a metaphysics of immanence can be accelerated by connecting its conceptual apparatus more explicitly to insights derived from philosophical analyses of computational modelling and simulation and the social scientific use of ‘assemblage theory’. The article concludes with a summary of the argument and a brief consideration of some of the potential ethical and political implications of this interdisciplinary engagement. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop the concept ofaffective milieusby building on the recently established notion ofaffective arrangements. Affective arrangements bring together the more analytical research of situated affectivity with affect studies informed by cultural theory. As such, this concept takes a step past the usual synchronic understanding of situatedness toward an understanding of the social, dynamic, historical, and cultural situatedness of individuals in relation to situated affectivity. However, I argue that affective arrangements remain too narrow in their scope of analysis (...) since their focus mainly lies on local, marked-off, and unique constellations of affect relations. They neglect the more mundane and day-to-day affect dynamics of social life. Hence, I introduce the notion of affective milieus, which brings to light the everyday, ubiquitous affective engagements of individuals with their socio-material surroundings. Affective milieus specifically call attention to how commonplace affect relations create territories in the social universe which form and mold individuals all the time. In that way, this paper apprehends and advances recent developments in the research on situated affectivity. (shrink)

This essay investigates the differences and points of contact between Walter Benjamin's concept of ‘constellation’ and the notion of ‘assemblage’ as theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Both concepts address the entanglement of discourse and matter, bodies and devices, and raise questions regarding the historicity and temporality of different kinds of multiplicity. Presently, the term ‘assemblage’ figures prominently in the context of the new materialism, a theoretical movement which calls for a renewal of materialist ideas, proposing a break with (...) the historical materialism of the past. Against this backdrop, the essay has a twofold purpose: first, by focusing on the notions of constellation and assemblage, it seeks to highlight the differences and analogies between the materialisms of Benjamin, on the one hand, and Deleuze and Guattari, on the other. Second, by examining the new materialism's appropriation of Deleuzian ‘assemblage theory’, it will not only analyse what is ‘new’ about the new materialism, but also underline its conceptual errors and political problems. Eventually, what the essay argues is that our contemporary understanding of assemblages might indeed benefit from a more thorough engagement with the historical materialism of an author like Benjamin. (shrink)

This paper introduces Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage theory into the contemporary biological context. I begin by laying out at some length what I take to be the defining features of Deleuze and Guattari's theory of assemblage. I consider this to be a worthwhile endeavour in its own right, and so dedicate a large portion of this paper to producing a clear account of what it is that characterises an assemblage. Then I provide a reading of Deleuze and Guattari's critical conception (...) of the organism as a kind of assemblage typified by an especially restrictive, self-regulating form of functional integration. This restrictiveness comprises what I take to be the first pole of organic life. Then I reconsider Deleuze and Guattari's positive comments about ‘non-organic life’ in this context, as a feature internal to the organisation of organic life instead of something to be set against it. I theorise this mostly in terms of symbiosis. I take the significance of symbiosis, consisting in what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘shared deterritorialisation’, to comprise the second pole of organic life. I conclude the paper with a brief discussion of how Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage-based conception of organism might be thought to anticipate and accommodate some of the contemporary research on biological individuality. (shrink)

In questo saggio analizzo l’idea del mondo come coesistenza di umani e cose, e sostengo che tale coesistenza debba essere considerate sotto la lente concettuale della responsabilità. Nei primi due paragrafi sostengo che l’esperienza umana è sempre mediata da un sistema di artefatti. Nel terzo e nel quarto paragrafo sintetizzo due differenti approcci filosofici, ossia la teoria degli artefatti e il metodo materialista, i quali condividono la tesi della performatività degli artefatti nella costituzione dell’esperienza umana. Nelle conclusioni mostro la rilevanza (...) etica e politica di questa possibile ermeneutica materiale del mondo. (shrink)

This paper presents a social-theologically informed interpretation of the term integrity, as it occurs in fundamental law. It explores the manifestations of integrity violations and proceeds to draw an inference: an integrity violation can directly emanate from a misconception regarding integrity itself, as well as the implementation of protective measures that follow it. Integrity in its wholeness dimension is understood as open-endedness and non-seclusion rather than as a substantial, clearly definable characteristic of a person. This open-endedness and non-seclusion results from (...) the relational constitution of an individual. Consequently, it follows that a violation of integrity occurs when the open-endedness and non-seclusion of a person and their relational Becoming is hindered. The new definition of integrity is particularly important when it comes to the governance of new health technologies, especially Digital Twins that can become representatives of a person. Human integrity is non-violated only when it is understood as open to relational Becoming and this Becoming shows its expression in the mutual enabling and support of self-articulation. (shrink)

Postphenomenologists and performativists criticize classical approaches to phenomenology for isolating human subjects from their socio-material relations. The purpose of this essay is to repudiate their criticism by presenting a nuanced account of phenomenology thus making it evident that phenomenological theories have the potential for meshing with the performative idiom of contemporary science and technology studies. However, phenomenology retains an apparent shortcoming in that its proponents typically focus on human–nonhuman relations that arise in localized contexts. For this reason, it seems to (...) contrast with one of the core assumptions behind practical ontologies: that socio-practical significance extends beyond an agent’s immediate situatedness in a localized context. Turning to Heidegger’s phenomenology and his notion of ‘de-distancing’, the essay explores how localized phenomena that pertain to human experience connect with global practices and, thus, the possibility of consilience between phenomenological research and present-day STS. (shrink)

If the development of assemblage theory does not need to be anchored in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, as increasingly seems to be the case in the social sciences, then cannot one say that the future of assemblage theory is an illusion? It is an illusion in the sense that it continues to act as though the concept was invented by Deleuze and Guattari, but because it does not feel obligated to draw on their work in its actual operation (...) or development, it cannot lay claim to being authentic. That this does not trouble certain scholars in the social sciences is troubling to me. So in this paper I offer first of all critique of this illusory synthetic version of the assemblage and accompany that with a short case study showing what can be gained by returning to Deleuze and Guattari. (shrink)

This conceptual paper explores the theoretical possibilities of posthumanism and presents ecologies of repair as a heuristic device to explore the association modes of different entities, which, when confronted with the effects of human-induced destructive events, seek to repair the damage and transform the conditions of coexistence of various life forms. The central idea is that severe socio-environmental crisis caused by an intensification of industrial activity are conducive to observing new sociomaterial configurations and affective dispositions that, through the reorganization of (...) practices of resistance, remediation, and mutual care, are oriented to generating reparative and/or transformative processes from damaged ecologies and communities. Crises constitute true ontological experimentation processes where the presence of other-than-human natures, and of artifacts or devices that participate in reparative actions, become visible. A post-human approach to nature allows us to use languages and methodologies that do not restrict the emergence of assemblages under the assumption of theira prioriontological separation, but rather examine their reparative potential based on the efficacy of situated relationships. Methodologically, transdisciplinarity is relevant, with ethnography and other engaged methods applied over units of observation and experience called socio-geo-ecologies. The relevant attributes of these socio-geo-ecologies, beyond the individual, community, or institutional aspects, are the specific geological characteristics that make possible an entanglement of interdependent relationships between human and non-human agents. The conceptual analysis is illustrated with empirical examples stemming from socio-geo-ecologies researched in Southern Chile. (shrink)

In his book, History as a Science and the System of the Sciences, Thomas Seebohm articulates the view that history can serve to mediate between the sciences of explanation and the sciences of interpretation, that is, between the natural sciences and the human sciences. Among other things, Seebohm analyzes history from a phenomenological perspective to reveal the material foundations of the historical human sciences in the lifeworld. As a preliminary to his analyses, Seebohm examines the formal and material presuppositions of (...) phenomenological epistemology, as well as the emergence of the human sciences and the traditional distinctions and divisions that are made between the natural and the human sciences. -/- As part of this examination, Seebohm devotes a section to discussing Husserl’s formal mereology because he understands that a reflective analysis of the foundations of the historical sciences requires a reflective analysis of the objects of the historical sciences, that is, of concrete organic wholes (i.e., social groups) and of their parts. Seebohm concludes that Husserl’s mereological ontology needs to be altered with regard to the historical sciences because the relations between organic wholes and their parts are not summative relations. Seebohm’s conclusion is relevant for the issue of the reducibility of organic wholes such as social groups to their parts and for the issue of the reducibility of the historical sciences to the lower-order sciences, that is, to the sciences concerned with lower-order ontologies. -/- In this paper, I propose to extend Seebohm’s conclusion to the ontology of chemical wholes as object of quantum chemistry and to argue that Husserl’s formal mereology is descriptively inadequate for this regional ontology as well. This may seem surprising at first, since the objects studied by quantum chemists are not organic wholes. However, my discussion of atoms and molecules as they are understood in quantum chemistry will show that Husserl’s classical summative and extensional mereology does not accurately capture the relations between chemical wholes and their parts. This conclusion is relevant for the question of the reducibility of chemical wholes to their parts and of the reducibility of chemistry to physics, issues that have been of central importance within the philosophy of chemistry for the past several decades. (shrink)