Poetry as Spiritual Exercise

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 793-796
Author(s):  
Jean Wahl ◽  
Russell J. Duvernoy ◽  
Christopher Lura ◽  
Anna-Marie Hansen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Spiritual Exercise ◽  
Process Metaphysics

“La Poésie Comme Exercice Spirituel” first appeared in a 1942 issue of Revue Fontaine edited by Jacques and Raissa Maritain and was subsequently republished in Wah’s 1948 text Poésie, Pensée, Perception, published by Calmann-Lévy. The following is a translation of the Fontaine version. I have noted all of the variations from the latter version in the notes. As I emphasize in my commentary, the piece is a notable display of Wahl’s eclectic range of influences. Most importantly, it shows the extent to which his interest in radical empiricism and process metaphysics informs his creative approach to the intersection of poetics and metaphysics. These interests are not explicitly named in the essay, and yet their influence is pervasive. The essay also includes several moments of substantial resonance with the work of Gilles Deleuze, as noted in the commentary.

Commentary on Jean Wahl

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 797-807
Author(s):  
Russell J. Duvernoy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Spiritual Exercise ◽  
Process Metaphysics

This commentary considers Wahl’s 1942 “Poetry as Spiritual Exercise” in the context of his interests in radical empiricism and process metaphysics. In doing so, it raises appreciation for the complexity of his thought, identifies specific notes of influence on Gilles Deleuze, and responds to worries that Wahl’s notion of spiritual exercise is predominantly a form of withdrawal, quietism, or retreat from the horrors of World War Two. For Wahl, rather than passive contemplation of a determinate artifact, poetry is a mode of experience that, to speak with Whitehead and James, is a making. This experience of poetry develops affordances of thought that strengthen existential capacity for remaining open to uncertainty, fragility, and vulnerability.

Affect and Attention After Deleuze and Whitehead

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Duvernoy
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary Context

The book develops a process metaphysical conception of subjectivity from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. This alters existential orientations towards affect and attention in ways described as ecological attunement. The study is guided by two methodological commitments: (i) demonstrating the importance and relevance of responsible speculative thinking and (ii) translating metaphysical ideas into their existential implications. Both commitments are motivated by a contemporary context of ecological crisis and paradigm transformation. In the course of its argument, the book relates the work of Deleuze and Whitehead to other speculative trends in recent philosophy, particularly posthumanisms and speculative realisms. Deleuze and Whitehead are read in a shared lineage of radical empiricism that emphasizes processes and events as metaphysically primary. A key theme is understanding subjectivity through dynamic processes of individuation at variable scales where feeling/affect and attention acquire metaphysical rather than psychological scope and status. Whitehead’s analysis of “feeling” as metaphysical operation is explored in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's Spinozist-inspired deployment of affect. Attending participates as a crucial bridge between the metaphysical and the existential in processes of consolidation of present real actual occasions. The book develops existential implications of these claims in the context of an expanded philosophical conception of ecology. These implications challenge dominant modes of subjectification under what Guattari calls “Integrated World Capitalism” (IWC). The book concludes with discussion of how speculative philosophy may contribute to alternative futures.

Radical Empiricism: William James and Gilles Deleuze

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
John J. Stuhr
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
William James ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Transcendental Empiricism ◽  
Creative Art ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Changing World

Abstract Both William James and Gilles Deleuze labeled their philosophies "radical empiricism." In this context, this essay explores the similarities and differences between James's radical empiricism (particularly as it is present early inches Principles of Psychology) and Deleuze's "transcendental empiricism" (particularly as set forth in The Logic of Sense). These accounts then inform a view of philosophy understood as a creative art. This art demands flexible habits--what James termed "genius"--in a changing world. Accordingly, radically empirical accounts of creativity and genius are sketched.

The Death of Gilles Deleuze as Composition of a Concept

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Alain Beaulieu ◽  
Douglas Ord
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
In Memoriam ◽  
Looking Glass

There was a wide range of in memoriam and homages published in the years following Deleuze's suicide. However, none of them succeeded in grasping ‘the evential’ aspect of his death. This paper identifies a series of errors in the literature on Deleuze's death. It also suggests a way to overcome them by considering a singular encounter between Alice's passage through the looking glass and Deleuze's defenestration, which both took place on 4 November. We will show how a new conception of death as event comes out of this unseen connection.

Friedrich Nietzsche

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lemm
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Point Of Reference

Readers of Giorgio Agamben would agree that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is not one of his primary interlocutors. As such, Agamben’s engagement with Nietzsche is different from the French reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy in Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Georges Bataille, as well as in his contemporary Italian colleague Roberto Esposito, for whom Nietzsche’s philosophy is a key point of reference in their thinking of politics beyond sovereignty. Agamben’s stance towards the thought of Nietzsche may seem ambiguous to some readers, in particular with regard to his shifting position on Nietzsche’s much-debated vision of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Individuation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Hengehold
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Other ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

Most studies of Simone de Beauvoir situate her with respect to Hegel and the tradition of 20th-century phenomenology begun by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. This book analyzes The Second Sex in light of the concepts of becoming, problematization, and the Other found in Gilles Deleuze. Reading Beauvoir through a Deleuzian lens allows more emphasis to be placed on Beauvoir's early interest in Bergson and Leibniz, and on the individuation of consciousness, a puzzle of continuing interest to both phenomenologists and Deleuzians. By engaging with the philosophical issues in her novels and student diaries, this book rethinks Beauvoir’s focus on recognition in The Second Sex in terms of women’s struggle to individuate themselves despite sexist forms of representation. It shows how specific forms of women’s “lived experience” can be understood as the result of habits conforming to and resisting this sexist “sense.” Later feminists put forward important criticisms regarding Beauvoir’s claims not to be a philosopher, as well as the value of sexual difference and the supposedly Eurocentric universalism of her thought. Deleuzians, on the other hand, might well object to her ideas about recognition. This book attempts to address those criticisms, while challenging the historicist assumptions behind many efforts to establish Beauvoir’s significance as a philosopher and feminist thinker. As a result, readers can establish a productive relationship between Beauvoir’s “problems” and those of women around the world who read her work under very different circumstances.

Hannibal aux aguets: On the Lookout for New Rencontres

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles J. Stivale
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Commercial Television ◽  
Thomas Harris ◽  
Highly Skilled ◽  
Video Interview

In L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, a 1988-9 video interview, Deleuze discusses with Claire Parnet the crucial link between creativity, the very possibility of thinking, and animality, through the practice of “être aux aguets” (being on the lookout) for rencontres. This chapter considers how this constitutes the essential practice of the character of Hannibal Lecter, created by Thomas Harris in several novels (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising) and, more recently, portrayed in the commercial television series “Hannibal” by Mads Mikkelsen. Hannibal is portrayed as a highly refined individual who not only can sense physically the presence of any threat through extraordinary olfactory powers, but can also categorize, store and then recall any such scents/essences through a Memory Museum. In the television series, Hannibal as highly skilled culinary artist combines the results of his being “on the lookout” with an efficient and often gruesome taste for fine dining, with strategically selected guests usually uninformed about the courses on the menu. The chapter thus considers the concepts of the animal, “être aux aguets” and “refrains” in the light of fictional production, both in print and televisual form, in order to open the Deleuzian concepts to an alternate, creative reading.

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