- Wellington, New Zealand
- Literary Theory, Literary Criticism, Gilles Deleuze, Poststructuralism, Critical Theory, Gilles Deleuze and Literature, and 24 moreJacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Immanuel Kant, Jean-François Lyotard, Continental Philosophy, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Deleuze, Marxism, Philosophy, Modernity, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Futurism, Libidinal Economy, Literature, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Nietzsche, Schizoanalysis, Felix Guattari, Deleuze and Guattari, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Michael J. Shapiroedit
- I’m an independent researcher interested in French post-structuralism and literary theory.edit
While Deleuze and Guattari's passion for certain literature is well known, the nature of a ‘Deleuzian’ literary criticism remains an open question. However, most critics appear to agree that Deleuze and Guattari's comments on meaning and... more
While Deleuze and Guattari's passion for certain literature is well known, the nature of a ‘Deleuzian’ literary criticism remains an open question. However, most critics appear to agree that Deleuze and Guattari's comments on meaning and interpretation offer an ontological alternative to the textual focus of deconstruction. Through an interrogation of the difficult style of their books in relation to Plato, Nietzsche and Derrida, this paper offers a different reading of Deleuze and Guattari in relation to literary criticism. Despite appearances, transcendental empiricism and the project of ‘overturning Platonism’ provide a Deleuzian theory of reading that attends to textuality.
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This text, written but not used as part of my doctoral research in 2000-2003, considers Deleuze and Guattari's approach to writing and literature in terms of cybernetics. It develops a cybernetic reading of key concepts like 'strata',... more
This text, written but not used as part of my doctoral research in 2000-2003, considers Deleuze and Guattari's approach to writing and literature in terms of cybernetics. It develops a cybernetic reading of key concepts like 'strata', 'lines', and the infamous 'deterritorialisation', with reference to writing in particular.
I was directed to look at cybernetics by Nick Land and Manuel Delanda in the early 1990s, while at the University of Warwick. I think it is a fascinating area, but I remain cautious on two fronts. First, I think this move to cybernetics reflects a flight from textuality towards ontology - an attempt, that is, to evade the consequences of Derrida's work. Second, I think it reflects a kind of millennial faith in technology (rather than science as such) as a kind of 'end of philosophy', i.e. that technology somehow escapes metaphysics. As well as Derrida, I think we need to listen to the early Baudrillard. He asks a simple but decisive question, which I would paraphrase as follows: is technology taking us to a future utopia based on scientific rationality? Or is it deferring and distracting us from our inevitable deaths. I can only honestly answer with the latter. But this is not to say we should despair or give up. There is much to do on Earth, we need tools. The point is: don't put your faith in the story of scientific and technological progress. A tool is finite. Many tools only allow us to complete tasks that we wouldn't do if we didn't have the tool. It's a bit like watching reality TV - often strangely compelling if you do it but you miss nothing is you don't...
I was directed to look at cybernetics by Nick Land and Manuel Delanda in the early 1990s, while at the University of Warwick. I think it is a fascinating area, but I remain cautious on two fronts. First, I think this move to cybernetics reflects a flight from textuality towards ontology - an attempt, that is, to evade the consequences of Derrida's work. Second, I think it reflects a kind of millennial faith in technology (rather than science as such) as a kind of 'end of philosophy', i.e. that technology somehow escapes metaphysics. As well as Derrida, I think we need to listen to the early Baudrillard. He asks a simple but decisive question, which I would paraphrase as follows: is technology taking us to a future utopia based on scientific rationality? Or is it deferring and distracting us from our inevitable deaths. I can only honestly answer with the latter. But this is not to say we should despair or give up. There is much to do on Earth, we need tools. The point is: don't put your faith in the story of scientific and technological progress. A tool is finite. Many tools only allow us to complete tasks that we wouldn't do if we didn't have the tool. It's a bit like watching reality TV - often strangely compelling if you do it but you miss nothing is you don't...
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"Modernity is generally associated with a move towards abstraction in the arts. But alongside visual art, architecture, and music, there is an apparently empty place – the place which ought to be occupied by a literary abstract... more
"Modernity is generally associated with a move towards abstraction in the arts. But alongside visual art, architecture, and music, there is an apparently empty place – the place which ought to be occupied by a literary abstract writing. Why is this so? The obvious answer, if we consider what is conventionally meant by “the literary”, seems to be that this concept is a contradiction-in-terms, and that an abstract literature is, a priori, impossible. In an ordinary sense, this is undoubtedly the case: literary abstract writing is impossible.
However, by examining this impossibility, with the help in particular of the conceptual tools provided by Derrida’s Of Grammatology—which is, at the same time, to be forced to revise our notions of what is meant by the idea of the impossible—it can be argued that we must begin to think beyond this conclusion. Not to reverse it, but to probe what determines, and what might be at stake in, this
impossibility. By considering the logic of the supplement, between writing and speech and also in the opposition of sign and thing, we can attempt to think the impossibility of a literary abstract writing outside of the metaphysical tradition that determines it as simply impossible, because it thinks the impossible as simple.
“The impossible in writing” can then act as a sort of key to understanding both the operation and the importance of Derridean concepts such as differance, arche-writing, and the trace, as well as to appreciating more fully the emphasis he gives to nonphonetic writing. At the same time, it appears that these concepts are a key to the question of the impossible in writing. "
However, by examining this impossibility, with the help in particular of the conceptual tools provided by Derrida’s Of Grammatology—which is, at the same time, to be forced to revise our notions of what is meant by the idea of the impossible—it can be argued that we must begin to think beyond this conclusion. Not to reverse it, but to probe what determines, and what might be at stake in, this
impossibility. By considering the logic of the supplement, between writing and speech and also in the opposition of sign and thing, we can attempt to think the impossibility of a literary abstract writing outside of the metaphysical tradition that determines it as simply impossible, because it thinks the impossible as simple.
“The impossible in writing” can then act as a sort of key to understanding both the operation and the importance of Derridean concepts such as differance, arche-writing, and the trace, as well as to appreciating more fully the emphasis he gives to nonphonetic writing. At the same time, it appears that these concepts are a key to the question of the impossible in writing. "
Research Interests: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Art History, Art Theory, Literature, and 16 moreContinental Philosophy, Literary Theory, Futurism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Jacques Derrida, Dada, Immanuel Kant, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Abstraction, Henry Miller, Toni Morrison, William S. Burroughs, Kurt Schwitters, St. Augustine, and Man Ray
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Philosophy of Literature, Continental Philosophy, and 13 moreLiterary Theory, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Georges Bataille, Immanuel Kant, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard, Anti-Oedipus, and A Thousand Plateaus
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Some brief reflections on the way contemporary society seems to want to become historical in the present. Written in 1999, before Smartphones and Twitter, both of which seem designed to prove the point.