The topic of this article came out of an academic shock: one of those jarring halts where agreeable study is brought short by an incongruous idea or image. Such jolts can be a good thing: they force us to think anew, in the Deleuzian sense of event as a shock…
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Perishing and Démontage in the Works of Jean-Marc Rochette: a Process Philosophy of Life and Death (Démontage II)
This post was partly written in preparation for a (storm-affected) contribution to the ERC funded project ‘Film and Death‘ led by Susana Viegas at IFILNOVA. J’ai moi-même souvent vécu ces temps d’intersection entre la vie et la mort. [I too have often lived through such times of intersection between life…
Continue ReadingCan a Sign Be Used Autonomously? (Semiology of Autopoiesis VIII)
To be a sense-maker is, in other words, to be actively sensitive to dangerous or beneficial trends in the ongoing coupling with the world. Sense-making thus combines, in nuce and for all forms of life, what for complex minds, like those of animals, can be differentiated into action, perception, and…
Continue ReadingTime and One-way Events: Bande Dessinée as Démontage (Deleuze’s Timed Logic, VII; Démontage I)
[To give a sense of the bande dessinées referred to in this discussion I have included covers and links to publishers. Many of them give sample pages of their books on their websites, should you want to follow them up. I make no financial benefit from these links. They are…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (VI) The Event and Time (English Draft of Version for Sabah Ülkesi Magazine)
The step is mouldy and uncomfortable. They come to sit either side of you. Remnants of tear gas in their eyes: both are crying. Your nostrils burn too. Screams and shield bashing can be heard rising from the main square. How is this an event? Well worn, the stone has…
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 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 ReadingMatter and Sense in Gilles Deleuze’s Logic of Sense: Against the ‘Ism’ in Speculative Realism
New article just published in Deleuze and Guattari Studies 15.4 (2021): 477–496DOI: 10.3366/dlgs.2021.0454 The article is part of Simon Schleusener’s edited volume Deleuze and the Material Turn. Simon’s collection is an important step in understanding Deleuze’s complex relation to new materialisms. It is a pleasure to have been able to…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Timed Logic (III) Tested to Destruction
When something is tested to destruction, for instance, when a seat is repeatedly pounded by a weight attached to a robot arm to gauge how long it will last in regular use, a series from the past traverses the present and extends into the future at each thump on the…
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