The term “dividual” aims to present a critical view of the Western conception of persons and artworks as individuals. It is used in Euro-American anthropology in order to analyze the practical and ethical interferences between single persons and communities mainly in non-Western cultures. It is also used by Gilles Deleuze in Cinema 1. The Movement-Image in order to describe the aesthetic and self-affective character of films: since the filmic images cannot be temporarily fixed and individualized, he calls them “dividual”, much (...) like contemporary plurivocal musical compositions. He reads their articulations as transitions between temporarily varying semiotic combinations; thus, they are not “‘divisible or indivisible’, but ‘dividual.’”(14) Referring to this Deleuzian concept, I want to delve into different films under this aesthetic perspective, exposing their character of mutual allusions and formal adaptations: from a docufiction by Jean Rouch to feature films by Jean-Luc Godard, Med Hondo and Jean-Pierre Bekolo. These films dividuate themselves due to their aesthetic interferences and the curious observation that certain European film styles were “invented” in an African context. (shrink)

The spectre of determinism stalks many of the concerns surrounding the impact of genetic research into both disease and normal behaviour. The ability accurately to predict a person's actions would certainly have profound implications for notions of individuality and free will. But to what extent will the current explosion in genetic research provide more accurate predictors than have been available for millennia in the form of wealth, social status and perceived family resemblance? The genetic research program is at too early (...) a stage to answer this question with confidence, but various indicators tend to point in the same direction: the predictive ability of genetic analysis will generally be low. This conclusion runs counter to widely perceived popular notions. The deconstruction of genetic determinism is an essential safeguard against the real concern that genetic information may be used for discrimination by unscrupulous powers. (shrink)