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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Language and Process: Words, Whitehead and the World by Michael Halewood
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…
Continue ReadingThe Nostalgic Sublime
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…
Continue ReadingMessi is not sublime (nor is Ronaldo)
My book on the egalitarian sublime has almost no sport in it. I avoid it for political and philosophical reasons. Politically, as entertainment, sports are the bread and circuses of our age, culminating in the sportswashing beloved of kleptocrats, monopolies and repressive governments. The problem with sport runs deeper than…
Continue ReadingDeleuze’s Philosophy of Time: Time as Dimensions, Syntheses and Problems (Vilnius, Lithuanian Philosophical Association, May 2019)
Expanded text to my keynote talk on Deleuze and time given to the Lithuanian Philosophical Association, May 2019
Continue ReadingTruth as the fullest: on journalism in the age of fake news
This paper on truth and process philosophy follows from my talk at The Politics of (Post) Truth conference at Cumberland Lodge in October 2018 https://www.jamesrwilliams.net/the-politics-of-post-truth/ It is also a reflection on truth and the process philosophy of signs. Truth as the fullest: on journalism in the age of fake news
Continue ReadingPosthuman Ecologies: Complexity and Process after Deleuze
My article in this innovative volume edited by Rosi Braidotti and Simone Bignall is on time and the posthuman (there’s an earlier draft in the Deleuze section of this site). There are many great articles in the collection, on pressing contemporary issues, including environment and ecology, political action after Deleuze,…
Continue ReadingThe Egalitarian Sublime: a Process Philosophy
My book on the sublime is going into production with Edinburgh University Press. It should be in print by August 2019. As a foretaste, here is the current version of the back cover information: The Egalitarian Sublime: a Process Philosophy A new, egalitarian, process philosophy of the sublime We call…
Continue ReadingThe Philosophy of Events
Summer Symposium in Contemporary Philosophy The University of Bonn International Centre for Philosophy NRW The Philosophy of Events My seminars will be on signs and events (in Deleuze, Whitehead and my process philosophy of signs)
Continue ReadingComedy and Critical Thought: Laughter as Resistance
Comedy and Critical Thought, edited by Iain MacKenzie, Fred Francis, and Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone Includes my chapter on signs, diagrams and humour, ‘Diagrams of Comic Estrangement’ Draft version here
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