My research focuses on the different ways the tension between embodied difference and its conceptual representation is resolved by phenomenology and by the French post-structuralists. One way I address this problem is by looking at the way Heidegger criticizes Nietzsche's response to it and comparing that to Deleuze's positive use of Nietzsche to resolve problems he sees in Heidegger's account. Supervisors: Leonard Lawlor
Commentators have claimed that the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze converge upon a spatial field of sensation which is prior to representation. This essay will contest these readings by showing that, for Deleuze, the pre-representational spatial field of intensity is fundamentally split from thought. This “gap” between sensation and thought is, for Deleuze, fundamentally temporal, in that thought is continually open and passive to being violated and transformed by the sensible and the sensible is continually being pushed beyond itself by a certain kind of thought. This violent exchange across the gap between thought and sensibility is found, by Deleuze, in Kant's notion of the aesthetic idea. On the contrary, for Merleau-Ponty, Kant's aesthetics imply a non-conceptual “ground” shared by both thought and sensibility. By contrasting these two readings of Kant's aesthetics, this paper reveals the basic divergence between the philosophies of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty.
Dramatization has been conceived by some Deleuze scholars as ‘dramatizing’ the mode of existence ... more Dramatization has been conceived by some Deleuze scholars as ‘dramatizing’ the mode of existence of a subject. This paper argues, on the contrary, dramatization involves the very creation of a viewpoint on the world. The ethical significance of dramatization is not the ability to ‘evaluate’ certain subjective modes of existence, but to produce ways of unfolding the world in which we do not ‘imprison’ others and in which multiple perspectives are allowed to unfold. Love is incapable of such a truly ethical comportment, because the lover is always thrown back onto their own world, trapped within subjectivity, unable to see from two viewpoints at once. A world is most precisely a set of signs, a set of relationships between ‘things’ and ‘meanings’ (senses); therefore, in order to produce more ‘ethical’ worlds, worlds in which we do not ‘explicate’ or imprison ourselves and others too much, we must turn to art. Art is precisely a ‘unity’ in which multiple perspectives are allowed to unfold at their own rhythm. Language perfects this insofar as the creation of new modes of grammatical relation in writing is nothing more than the unification of a multiplicity of relationships between meaning and things.
Forthcoming in Deleuze Studies, January 2016
Please email me or click on 'Request PDF' for a copy
Deleuze’s concept of life is valorized in the humanities today for its ability to grant agency or activity to non-human entities. This essay argues that, in fact, Deleuze sees the concept of life as a kind of passive creation which escapes the traces of subjectivity remaining in agency
This paper calls into question the privilege granted to creativity by most commentators on Deleuz... more This paper calls into question the privilege granted to creativity by most commentators on Deleuze by demonstrating the priority of ethics over creation in relation to the concept of the image. It takes up Jacque Derrida’s “grumble” about the central place of creativity in Deleuze, showing how this grumble is applicable to influential readers of Deleuze including Anne Sauvagnargues, Ronald Bogue and John Protevi. Another reading of Deleuze will be given which calls the priority of creation into question, rescuing Deleuze from Derrida’s grumble. Deleuze’s notion of the image will be put into a tradition of thinking the relationship between light and appearance which runs from Plato through Bergson, Heidegger and Derrida. The notion of the image as the basic material of existence is then explained to be a passive fusion of external elements and shown to be made more consistent from Difference and Repetition to Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. The paper will then show how the “good” image in Plato is fundamentally constructed based on a moral motivation, on Deleuze’s reading in Difference and Repetition. The “good” image is one which resembles the Idea which remains identical to itself over time. A Thousand Plateaus will then be called upon to demonstrate how this self-same Idea is in fact the universalization of that which remains the identical to itself in the world, that is, the Idea universalizes a purely conservative social organization which eliminates all that differs from itself. In this way, Plato institutes the moral interpretation of the world which forms a moral image of thought. Deleuze’s ethical images will be precisely those which force thought to see the intolerability of the exclusionary social organizations it universalizes. After outlining Deleuze’s notion of the splitting of time in Cinema 2: The Time-Image, we will show how the body links humanity to this splitting of time because it causes the present to collapse when it is exhausted. The bodies which are fatigued and wiped out in the present organization of social space must be given voice in a speech-act which forces thought to see the impossibility of living in the present for certain bodies. Ultimately, thought must be made to see its own embodiment, in the brain, and thus see how the boundaries it imposes upon bodies prevent its own operation outside of the strict boundaries of the dominant reality. However, it will be shown that the vision thought has of its own impossibility is constantly being buried in the past, whilst new intolerable worlds are continually arising anew. In this light, we will end with Derrida’s sensitive insight that, for Deleuze, the best thought, the best philosophy, the best writing is not concerned with the creation of the new in itself, but rather is continually haunted by the impossibility of thought and the ethical horrors of stupidity.
Commentators have claimed that the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze converge upon a spatial field of sensation which is prior to representation. This essay will contest these readings by showing that, for Deleuze, the pre-representational spatial field of intensity is fundamentally split from thought. This “gap” between sensation and thought is, for Deleuze, fundamentally temporal, in that thought is continually open and passive to being violated and transformed by the sensible and the sensible is continually being pushed beyond itself by a certain kind of thought. This violent exchange across the gap between thought and sensibility is found, by Deleuze, in Kant's notion of the aesthetic idea. On the contrary, for Merleau-Ponty, Kant's aesthetics imply a non-conceptual “ground” shared by both thought and sensibility. By contrasting these two readings of Kant's aesthetics, this paper reveals the basic divergence between the philosophies of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty.
Dramatization has been conceived by some Deleuze scholars as ‘dramatizing’ the mode of existence ... more Dramatization has been conceived by some Deleuze scholars as ‘dramatizing’ the mode of existence of a subject. This paper argues, on the contrary, dramatization involves the very creation of a viewpoint on the world. The ethical significance of dramatization is not the ability to ‘evaluate’ certain subjective modes of existence, but to produce ways of unfolding the world in which we do not ‘imprison’ others and in which multiple perspectives are allowed to unfold. Love is incapable of such a truly ethical comportment, because the lover is always thrown back onto their own world, trapped within subjectivity, unable to see from two viewpoints at once. A world is most precisely a set of signs, a set of relationships between ‘things’ and ‘meanings’ (senses); therefore, in order to produce more ‘ethical’ worlds, worlds in which we do not ‘explicate’ or imprison ourselves and others too much, we must turn to art. Art is precisely a ‘unity’ in which multiple perspectives are allowed to unfold at their own rhythm. Language perfects this insofar as the creation of new modes of grammatical relation in writing is nothing more than the unification of a multiplicity of relationships between meaning and things.
Forthcoming in Deleuze Studies, January 2016
Please email me or click on 'Request PDF' for a copy
Deleuze’s concept of life is valorized in the humanities today for its ability to grant agency or activity to non-human entities. This essay argues that, in fact, Deleuze sees the concept of life as a kind of passive creation which escapes the traces of subjectivity remaining in agency
This paper calls into question the privilege granted to creativity by most commentators on Deleuz... more This paper calls into question the privilege granted to creativity by most commentators on Deleuze by demonstrating the priority of ethics over creation in relation to the concept of the image. It takes up Jacque Derrida’s “grumble” about the central place of creativity in Deleuze, showing how this grumble is applicable to influential readers of Deleuze including Anne Sauvagnargues, Ronald Bogue and John Protevi. Another reading of Deleuze will be given which calls the priority of creation into question, rescuing Deleuze from Derrida’s grumble. Deleuze’s notion of the image will be put into a tradition of thinking the relationship between light and appearance which runs from Plato through Bergson, Heidegger and Derrida. The notion of the image as the basic material of existence is then explained to be a passive fusion of external elements and shown to be made more consistent from Difference and Repetition to Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. The paper will then show how the “good” image in Plato is fundamentally constructed based on a moral motivation, on Deleuze’s reading in Difference and Repetition. The “good” image is one which resembles the Idea which remains identical to itself over time. A Thousand Plateaus will then be called upon to demonstrate how this self-same Idea is in fact the universalization of that which remains the identical to itself in the world, that is, the Idea universalizes a purely conservative social organization which eliminates all that differs from itself. In this way, Plato institutes the moral interpretation of the world which forms a moral image of thought. Deleuze’s ethical images will be precisely those which force thought to see the intolerability of the exclusionary social organizations it universalizes. After outlining Deleuze’s notion of the splitting of time in Cinema 2: The Time-Image, we will show how the body links humanity to this splitting of time because it causes the present to collapse when it is exhausted. The bodies which are fatigued and wiped out in the present organization of social space must be given voice in a speech-act which forces thought to see the impossibility of living in the present for certain bodies. Ultimately, thought must be made to see its own embodiment, in the brain, and thus see how the boundaries it imposes upon bodies prevent its own operation outside of the strict boundaries of the dominant reality. However, it will be shown that the vision thought has of its own impossibility is constantly being buried in the past, whilst new intolerable worlds are continually arising anew. In this light, we will end with Derrida’s sensitive insight that, for Deleuze, the best thought, the best philosophy, the best writing is not concerned with the creation of the new in itself, but rather is continually haunted by the impossibility of thought and the ethical horrors of stupidity.
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Papers by Joseph Barker
Published in:
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2018, Vol 49, Issue 1
Online version located:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2017.1397335
Commentators have claimed that the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze converge upon a spatial field of sensation which is prior to representation. This essay will contest these readings by showing that, for Deleuze, the pre-representational spatial field of intensity is fundamentally split from thought. This “gap” between sensation and thought is, for Deleuze, fundamentally temporal, in that thought is continually open and passive to being violated and transformed by the sensible and the sensible is continually being pushed beyond itself by a certain kind of thought. This violent exchange across the gap between thought and sensibility is found, by Deleuze, in Kant's notion of the aesthetic idea. On the contrary, for Merleau-Ponty, Kant's aesthetics imply a non-conceptual “ground” shared by both thought and sensibility. By contrasting these two readings of Kant's aesthetics, this paper reveals the basic divergence between the philosophies of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty.
Forthcoming in Deleuze Studies, January 2016
Please email me or click on 'Request PDF' for a copy
Published version:
Online access: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/603502
Mosaic, December 2015
Deleuze’s concept of life is valorized in the humanities today for its ability to grant agency or activity to non-human entities. This essay argues that, in fact, Deleuze sees the concept of life as a kind of passive creation which escapes the traces of subjectivity remaining in agency
Published in:
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2018, Vol 49, Issue 1
Online version located:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2017.1397335
Commentators have claimed that the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze converge upon a spatial field of sensation which is prior to representation. This essay will contest these readings by showing that, for Deleuze, the pre-representational spatial field of intensity is fundamentally split from thought. This “gap” between sensation and thought is, for Deleuze, fundamentally temporal, in that thought is continually open and passive to being violated and transformed by the sensible and the sensible is continually being pushed beyond itself by a certain kind of thought. This violent exchange across the gap between thought and sensibility is found, by Deleuze, in Kant's notion of the aesthetic idea. On the contrary, for Merleau-Ponty, Kant's aesthetics imply a non-conceptual “ground” shared by both thought and sensibility. By contrasting these two readings of Kant's aesthetics, this paper reveals the basic divergence between the philosophies of Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty.
Forthcoming in Deleuze Studies, January 2016
Please email me or click on 'Request PDF' for a copy
Published version:
Online access: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/603502
Mosaic, December 2015
Deleuze’s concept of life is valorized in the humanities today for its ability to grant agency or activity to non-human entities. This essay argues that, in fact, Deleuze sees the concept of life as a kind of passive creation which escapes the traces of subjectivity remaining in agency