Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson

Transcription

1 Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson

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3 Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson Rhizomatic Connections Edited by Keith Robinson University of South Dakota

4 Editorial selection and matter Keith Robinson 2009 Chapters their individual authors 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

5 Contents Notes on the Contributors Acknowledgements vii x Introduction: Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson Rhizomatic Connections 1 Keith Robinson 1 Thinking with Deleuze and Whitehead: a Double Test 28 Isabelle Stengers 2 Language, Subjectivity and Individuality 45 Mick Halewood 3 Whitehead and Deleuze: Thinking the Event 61 André Cloots 4 The Emergence of a Speculative Empiricism: Whitehead Reading Bergson 77 Didier Debaise 5 Deleuze and Whitehead: the Concept of Reciprocal Determination 89 James Williams 6 Heterogenesis and the Problems of Metaphysics 106 Andrew Goffey 7 Deleuze, Whitehead and the Reversal of Platonism 128 Keith Robinson 8 Whitehead and Deleuze on Creation and Calculus 144 Jean-Claude Dumoncel v

6 vi Contents 9 Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze s Bergson and Bergson Himself 167 Peter Gunter 10 A Whiteheadian Chaosmos? 181 Tim Clark 11 O bitches of impossibility! Programmatic Dysfunction in the Chaosmos of Deleuze and Whitehead 200 Roland Faber Glossary of 25 Key Terms 220 Index 235

7 Notes on the Contributors Tim Clark received his PhD from the University of Warwick in 1997 for a thesis on Deleuze and Whitehead. He works as a freelance editor. Previous publications include Becoming Everyone: the Politics of Sympathy in Deleuze and Rorty, Radical Philosophy 147 (2008). André Cloots is Professor of Metaphysics at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has published extensively on process philosophy and the interrelationships of metaphysics, science and religion. His most recent publications deal with contemporary French philosophy, particularly with Marcel Gauchet (on modernity and religion) and with Gilles Deleuze. Didier Debaise is currently Research Fellow at The Max Planck Institute for the History of Sciences and Visiting Professor at the Université Paris X Nanterre. He has published numerous papers on Tarde, Bergson, Simondon, Whitehead and Deleuze, and is the author of Un Empiricisme spéculatif. Lecture de procès et réalité de Whitehead His current projects include work on the concept of power in Deleuze and Whitehead and a monograph on Whitehead for Belles Lettres, France. Jean-Claude Dumoncel taught logic and history of mathematics at the University of Caen and is a member of the Academos team at the Archives Henri Poincaré at Nancy. His doctoral thesis was on The System of Whitehead and Analytical Philosophy. He has published numerous books on Whitehead, Russell and Wittgenstein, and on the history and philosophy of mathematics, including Le Jeu de Wittgenstein (1991), Philosophie Deleuzienne et roman proustien (1996), Les 7 mots de Whitehead (1998), Philosophie des mathématiques (2002), La Philosophie telle quelle suivie de La conversation apocryphe entre Bergson et Russell (2004). He has a new book forthcoming: Deleuze face à face and is currently working on chaos and the use of the computer in philosophy. Roland Faber is Professor of Process Theology at the Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, Co-Director of the Center for vii

8 viii Notes on the Contributors Process Studies and Executive Director of the 2007 Whitehead Research Project. His fields of research and publication are poststructuralism (Gilles Deleuze); process thought and process theology; comparative philosophy of religion; inter-religious discourse (epistemological conditions, ontology), especially regarding Christianity/Buddhism; philosophy, systematic theology (the doctrine of God and creation, Christology and eschatology); cosmology, theology and the spirituality of the Renaissance; and mysticism (Meister Eckhart, Nicolas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno) with an emphasis on multiplicity, infinite becoming and theopoetics. Andrew Goffey is Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture and Communications at Middlesex University. In addition to writing on philosophy, he has written about biopolitics and the relationship between computing science and software. His current research focuses on the concept of experimentation in philosophy and its value for a revised assessment of cultural politics. Peter Gunter is a graduate of the University of Texas, Cambridge University and Yale University (1963). He is past chairman and Regents University Professor at the University of North Texas. Gunter s three main interests are process philosophy (especially the philosophies of Bergson and Whitehead), the philosophy of natural science and environmentalism. Still active in the development of the Big Thicket National Preserve in south-east Texas, he participates in the environmental philosophy programme at the University of North Texas. His publications include Bergson and the Evolution of Physics (1969) Bergson and Modern Science (1987) and Texas Land Ethics (1997, with Max Oelschlaeger). Mick Halewood is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. His research interests include the relationship of philosophy to social theory, contemporary theorizations of subjectivity and materiality, and the work of Whitehead and Deleuze. His publications include A. N. Whitehead, Information and Social Theory, Theory, Culture and Society (2005); and On Whitehead and Deleuze The Process of Materiality, Configurations (2007). He is currently editing a collection of papers on Whitehead for publication in a special edition of Theory, Culture and Society. Keith Robinson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Dakota. In he was Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium. He has published books and articles on Foucault, Deleuze and Whitehead,

9 Notes on the Contributors ix including Deleuze, Whitehead and the Transformations of Metaphysics. He is currently preparing a book on Deleuze and Whitehead. Isabelle Stengers teaches philosophy at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her interests first focused on the constructive adventure of modern sciences and the problems born of the association of this with power and claims to rational authority. She is now working on the crucial challenge, both political and cultural, of an ecology that would embed our many diverging practices in a democratic and demanding environment. This orientation manifests the ongoing inspiration she found in both Whitehead s and Deleuze s philosophy. She has written numerous books, among which (in English) are Order out of Chaos (with I. Prigogine), A History of Chemistry (with B. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent), Power and Invention. Situating Science, and The Invention of Modern Science. Her book on Whitehead, Penser avec Whitehead, is forthcoming in English translation from Harvard University Press. James Williams is Professor of European Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He has written widely on contemporary French philosophy. His most recent books include Gilles Deleuze s Logic of Sense: a Critical Introduction and Guide, The Lyotard Reader and Guide (with Keith Crome), Understanding Poststructuralism and The Transversal Thought of Gilles Deleuze: Encounters and Influences. He is currently working on a philosophical study of the untimely.

10 Acknowledgements In addition to the contributors and editors there are always others, too many to name, that are involved in a collaborative project like this. Embryonic work for the book really began at the Institute of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and I would like to thank André Cloots, Jan van der Veken and the students in my doctoral seminar on Deleuze and Whitehead there for providing such a stimulating intellectual environment. In addition, the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium provided funds and an ideal location for a conference that became the foundation for this project. I thank Isabelle Stengers and Keith-Ansell Pearson for their support at various stages. I am grateful to Daniel Bunyard at Palgrave Macmillan for his enthusiasm and interest in this project. The University of South Dakota provided institutional and material support for my research and my colleagues there offered a congenial environment to carry it out. My biggest debt is to my family, especially Mary Jo, for time, space and constant support. x