Across my first three posts on autopoiesis I have contrasted strict and looser definitions of the concept. The stricter definitions are more logically consistent; they hold together rigorously. The looser definitions apply to increased real and imaginary cases; they have greater extension. It would be a mistake, though, to think…
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Fantastic Pragmatism (published version)
My article on the need for pragmatism to be metaphysically inventive is now published in Nóema (No.13, 2022). Many thanks to the editorial board and readers for their comments and support. Fantastic Pragmatism (PDF) Introduction: pragmatism as fantastic, metaphysical and self-critical The everyday sense of pragmatic involves ideas of sensible…
Continue ReadingClaire Colebrook on Time and Autopoiesis: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV)
The three concepts of autopoiesis, equilibrium and homeostasis function in all these domains: neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, social theory and future studies. These concepts all presuppose a certain understanding of time, and suggest – as I state in the title to this essay – that the organism has…
Continue ReadingAutopoiesis and Time: Deleuze’s Timed Logic (V)/Semiology of Autopoiesis (III)
We can think of autopoiesis as resistance to the imposition of external time. The autonomy of an autopoietic process implies independence from transformational pressures by times outside the process. Autopoiesis should block external time from supplanting the internal time of the process. It could be objected that everything is resistant…
Continue ReadingDiagrams of Shame
Five threads pull through a diagram of the UK, as a smiling Minister signs away the lives of asylum seekers. Shame, care, disregard, mendacity and racism are twisting countries in opposed directions. Shame and care are much the stronger strands. They bind people together and are reinforced whenever and wherever…
Continue ReadingGraphic Events: a Realist Account of Graphic Design
I have a two-part interview on design, graphics and my process philosophy of signs in James Dyer and Nick Deakin’s new book on graphic design Graphic Events: a Realist Account of Graphic Design. Their collected volume introduces ground-breaking and disruptive theories and practices of design. My process philosophy of signs…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (IV): Passive to the Past
Though I’ve started these studies of timed logic with ways the present takes itself and other times as dimension, the time we have to turn to first, ‘originary time’ as Deleuze calls it, depends on another time for its ‘founding’, for setting it in motion. For time to flow, the…
Continue ReadingSemiology of Autopoiesis (II)
Selections of the Sign: Unity Maturana and Varela’s Autopoiesis: the Organization of the Living begins with a sentence indebted to George Spencer-Brown and his form of distinction where ‘distinction is perfect continence’. In their version, this becomes ‘A universe comes into being when a space is severed into two. A…
Continue ReadingThey can remove a monument, but they can’t erase the sign
2021 has been a year for removing and reassessing monuments around the world, from statues of slave traders to memorials for an uprising. One of the aims of state sponsored removals has been to eliminate a physical memento in order to obliterate the events it stood for. That aim can…
Continue ReadingSemiology of Autopoiesis (I)
What is the difference between conceptual analysis and semiology? An idea like autopoiesis can be analysed as a concept. We can study its description of self-making and autonomous organisations and life-forms for consistency, contradictions, meaning, references, through its cases and examples, its history, its implications and assumptions, and its values.…
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