The argument from my 2019 book on the sublime is that the sublime always has effects leading to inequalities. Given here in final draft form, The first chapter of the book introduces a succinct version of the argument, its critical consequences and how an anarchist approach to the sublime can…
Continue ReadingBlog
Fantastic pragmatism
[Discussion paper for Philosophy as a Method of Thinking Practices: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism in the Light of Pragmatism, Università degli Studi di Milano, 10 Feb 2021] The argument of this paper is a tautology: To be fantastic, pragmatism must be fantastic But tautologies are vulnerable to the multiple and…
Continue ReadingFirst Principle of Pragmatics: Everything Evolves Amidst a Shared Problem
This is an edited text from the Pragmatism and the Analytic-Continental Split Conference, University of Sheffield, 09/08/17 – 11/08/17. I’d held it back, partly due to my reservations about the idea of a split, but I’m returning to it here, since its definition of pragmatics prepares for a later post…
Continue ReadingMethod and Evidence in The Egalitarian Sublime: From Microhistory to Microcritique (following Carlo Ginzburg)
I’ve uploaded this edited extract from The Egalitarian Sublime (2019) to give a sense of the method I used in that book. Microhistory, and Carlo Ginzburg’s work in particular, helped me develop the method of microcritique, designed to cover the vast field of the sublime without reducing it to a…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (II)
Drawing on his philosophy of time, we can deduce Deleuze’s logic of events as processes. Taken fully, this logic is also the logic of his metaphysics, when it is considered as a system about the creation, encounter with, relations between, and changing of events. To develop this metaphysics, Deleuze doesn’t…
Continue ReadingDeleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity
If you are interested in studying the concept of multiplicity in Deleuze and Guattari, in particular in the context of art, I recommend this volume. I have a chapter in it (draft here) but the recommendation is for the many other important chapters where leaders in the field have done…
Continue ReadingThe Everyday Sublime
I hesitated calling this post ‘the everyday sublime’. The sublime I want to recommend doesn’t occur every day in the same way. On the contrary, it is an event interrupting daily repetition. It pulls new values into the everyday. Nonetheless, this sublime is everyday in the sense of within our…
Continue ReadingRisky Signs: Philosophy and Covid-19
In an earlier post, I discussed the politics of the restrictions of freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic in Tom Sorell’s new interpretation of Hobbes. Here, I consider the risks involved in the use of signs during the pandemic. Communication about Covid-19 and political responses to the pandemic have been dominated…
Continue ReadingAttempt to Close UWE Philosophy
I was external examiner for Philosophy at the University of the West of England in Bristol for a number of years. The proposal to close philosophy at the institution goes against all my experience of a high quality degree that has helped many students to flourish. It is taught by…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (I)
Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy can accommodate any number of logics in a subspace of its metaphysics. By accommodate, I mean that any given logic can be observed, operated and considered for consistency within that subspace. The fact that we can isolate part of Deleuze’s system and consider its logics does not…
Continue ReadingIs There a Virtual Sublime?
[Text and images for a talk on the virtual sublime at Ulster University, April 29, 2020. The talk itself became virtual due to global pandemic] A virtual sublime? Why ever not? The second question should guide any response to the confident dismissal of this or that as sublime, but it…
Continue Reading