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James R Williams

Honorary Professor of Philosophy
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Category: General

General, Process philosophy, Signs

Risky Signs: Philosophy and Covid-19

Post By James Williams 3rd July 2020

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…

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General

Attempt to Close UWE Philosophy

Post By James Williams 22nd June 2020

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…

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General, Process philosophy, Sublime

Is There a Virtual Sublime?

Post By James Williams 28th April 2020

[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…

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General, Sublime

The Egalitarian Sublime, Chapter 1

Post By James Williams 8th April 2020

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…

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General, Signs

Democracy and Emergencies: Philosophy and Covid-19

Post By James Williams 27th March 2020

Seven years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, Tom Sorell considered the conditions under which freedom might be restricted in a state of emergency, from the point of view of a ‘sober Hobbesian approach‘: The neo-Hobbesian framework I am outlining gives people legal latitude to become very attached to costume, literature,…

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General, Process philosophy, Signs

Signs and Democracy

Post By James Williams 21st March 2020

In this post I argue that signs are necessarily democratic. My reasoning depends on the definition of process signs from A Process Philosophy of Signs. It expands the meaning of democratic beyond a narrow political sense, before returning to the interdependence of two types of democracy: democracy of intervention and…

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General, Signs

Revisiting Style in Literary and Cultural Studies

Post By James Williams 18th March 2020

My chapter ‘Do Signs have Styles?’ is now published in the collection Revisiting Style in Literary and Cultural Studies edited by Jasmin Herrmann, Moritz Ingwersen, Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank and Olga Ludmila Tarapata. Their volume is a fascinating selection of recent academic work on style. You can find a draft of my…

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General, Process philosophy

Language and Process: Words, Whitehead and the World by Michael Halewood

Post By James Williams 18th March 2020

If you are interested in process philosophy and language, I recommend Michael Halewood’s new book on Language and Process. The book is the first in my new series as editor (with Jeffrey A. Bell and Paul Livingston) for Edinburgh University Press, Intersections in Continental and Analytic Philosophy. We have other…

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General, Process philosophy, Signs, Sublime

The Nostalgic Sublime

Post By James Williams 23rd January 2020

There is a strong argument against the idea of the nostalgic sublime. If the sublime leads to a drive to act in new ways, due to the enthusiasm released by simultaneous feelings of terror and attraction to a strange and inexplicable event, then the backward looking and stultifying qualities of…

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Deleuze, General

Metaphysics: Deleuze│Spencer-Brown

Post By James Williams 25th November 2019

Some philosophers, struck with the recent discovery that no one set of metaphysical assumptions is necessary to communication, have fallen into the fallacy of thinking that we can communicate without any metaphysics at all… It is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of discoveries in 2000 years to…

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Recent blog posts

  • Modes of Explanation: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV) 22nd January 2023
  • Fantastic Pragmatism (published version) 29th November 2022
  • Claire Colebrook on Time and Autopoiesis: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV) 4th November 2022
  • Autopoiesis and Time: Deleuze’s Timed Logic (V)/Semiology of Autopoiesis (III) 17th October 2022
  • Diagrams of Shame 14th June 2022

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About James Williams

James is Honorary Professor of Philosophy and member of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University.

 

Navigation

  • Home
  • Research Topics
    • Signs
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Recent posts

  • Modes of Explanation: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV)
  • Fantastic Pragmatism (published version)
  • Claire Colebrook on Time and Autopoiesis: Semiology of Autopoiesis (IV)
  • Autopoiesis and Time: Deleuze’s Timed Logic (V)/Semiology of Autopoiesis (III)
  • Diagrams of Shame
  • Graphic Events: a Realist Account of Graphic Design
  • Deleuze’s Timed Logic (IV): Passive to the Past
  • Semiology of Autopoiesis (II)
  • They can remove a monument, but they can’t erase the sign
  • Semiology of Autopoiesis (I)

Contact Info

  • Currently based in Scotland and France
  • hello@jamesrwilliams.net
James R Williams | © www.jamesrwilliams.net 2023
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