Author Archives: Kai Denker

– Keith Ansell Pearson: Germinal Life – The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze (Excerpt)

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It is Bergson who defines the task of philosophy as one of learning to think beyond the human condition. What exactly is the meaning of this ‘beyond’? Deleuze configures the task as follows: ‘To open us up to the inhuman and the superhuman (durations which are inferior or superior to our own), to go beyond the human condition: This is the meaning of philosophy, in so far as our condition condemns us to live among badly analyzed composites, and to be badly analyzed composites ourselves’ (Deleuze 1966: 19; 1988: 28). Why are we caught up in the investigation of badly analyzed composites and why are we those ourselves? What does it mean to be open to other durations?

Download full PDF: Pearson – Germinal Life (First chapter)

– Rosi Braidotti – The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible

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In this essay I will explore the eco-philosophical aspects of the ethics of becoming,

with reference to the project of nomadic subjectivity and sustainability. The urge that

prompts this investigation is not only abstract, but also very practical.  Nomadic

philosophy mobilizes one’s affectivity and enacts the desire for in-depth

transformations in the status of the kind of subjects we have become.  Such in-depth

changes, however, are at best demanding and at worst painful processes. My political

generation, that of the baby-boomers, has had to come to terms with this harsh reality,

which put a check on the intense and often fatal impatience that characterizes those

who yearn for change.

Download full PDF: Braidotti – The Ethics of Becoming Impercetible

– John Protevi – Water

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Speech held at the International Conference “Gilles Deleuze – Texts and Images”, South Carolina, April 5-8, 2007

 

For Deleuze and for DG, being is production. The production process (intensive difference driving material flows resulting in actual or extensive forms) is structured by virtual Ideas or multiplicities or “abstract machines.” Thought, however, is vice-diction or counter-effectuation: it goes the other way from production. It is a matter of establishing the Idea / multiplicity of something – “constructing a concept” – by moving from extensity through intensity to virtuality.

Download full PDF: Protevi – Water

– Marc Rölli: A Pragmatism of Difference? Gilles Deleuze’s pragmatic move beyond structuralism

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In the 26th series of paradoxes in Logique du sens (1969), Gilles Deleuze distinguishes between an order of language (l’ordre du langage) and an order of speech (l’ordre de la parole). Events are what make language possible, says Deleuze. But language does not begin with events. In fact nothing has its origin in the order of language. There is, however, always something beginning in the order of speech. There is always someone beginning to speak. „Il y a toujours quelqu’un qui commence à parler.“

 

Deleuze is alluding here to a famous passage in the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant says that our knowledge may commence or begin with experience, but “nevertheless does not […] originate […] in experience.” The reason for this, according to Kant, is that “our empirical knowledge” is “composed” of both empirical facts as well as a priori supplements.

 

A posteriori knowledge here, a priori knowledge there – and neither “can be distinguished from the other until long practice has made us attentive and skilled in differentiating between them.”

 

Download full PDF: Rölli – A Pragmatism of Difference?