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The Future of Immanence

Daniel Colucciello Barber

in Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-Secularism and the Future of Immanence

The Conclusion returns to the introductory context of Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” and it does so specifically in order to revisit the question of the future. It develops three ... More

The Conclusion returns to the introductory context of Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” and it does so specifically in order to revisit the question of the future. It develops three theses. First, it articulates the concept of immanent belief as a means by which immanence necessarily adopts a radically critical perspective on the secular. Second, it articulates the concept of metaphilosophy as a means by which immanence necessarily refuses tendencies that reduce it to affirmation or positivity. Finally, it articulates fabulation as a means by which immanence is necessarily conceived as the production of icons.Less

Crushed Black: On Archival Opacity

Tavia Nyong'o

in Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life

This chapter engages queer and black feminist debates over recovery, reparation, and the archive to offer a new account of the controversial film Portrait of Jason and its afterlives. Taking the ... More

This chapter engages queer and black feminist debates over recovery, reparation, and the archive to offer a new account of the controversial film Portrait of Jason and its afterlives. Taking the metaphor of “crushed blacks” to consider the value of obscurity, blur, and opacity in the archive, the chapter critiques positivist demands for historical legibility and veracity as hostile to the world-making survival stratagems of afro-fabulation.Less

Little Monsters: Unsettling the Sovereign Wild

Tavia Nyong'o

in Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life

Intervening in debates over post-humanist responses to climate change, this chapter engages black feminist and indigenous critique to explore the role afro-fabulation plays in contemporary ... More

Intervening in debates over post-humanist responses to climate change, this chapter engages black feminist and indigenous critique to explore the role afro-fabulation plays in contemporary catastrophism. Reading the play and film Beasts of the Southern Wild in relation to a Foucauldian and indigenous critique of sovereignty, this chapter argues that our dreams of rewilding the world after racial capitalism will still need to be decolonized.Less

People and Fabulation

Philippe Mengue

in Deleuze and Politics

This chapter focuses on the problematic of ‘fabulation’. Deleuze enticingly alludes to this Bergsonian figure in invoking a ‘new earth’ and a ‘people to come’, yet offers little elaboration. It is ... More

This chapter focuses on the problematic of ‘fabulation’. Deleuze enticingly alludes to this Bergsonian figure in invoking a ‘new earth’ and a ‘people to come’, yet offers little elaboration. It is argued that the concept of fabulation and its relation to the question of ‘the people’ raises important concerns both for the critical analysis of Deleuze's concepts and for politics more widely. Tracing the problem of myth and fabulation through Nietzsche, Heidegger and Deleuze, the chapter argues that a concern with fabulation enables an understanding of transversal ‘unity’ in Deleuze, one constructed as a ‘democratic plane of immanence’. This necessitates unsettling a number of Deleuze's direct and popularly perceived political and conceptual positions, not least his critique of democracy and disavowal of the autonomy of the political.Less

Conviction and prejudice: Arthur & George

Peter Childs

in Julian Barnes

Arthur & George is a book about unlikely pairings and questionable divisions. It is a fiction about truth and relativity, perception and rationality, fear and authority. Drawing on the real-life ... More

Arthur & George is a book about unlikely pairings and questionable divisions. It is a fiction about truth and relativity, perception and rationality, fear and authority. Drawing on the real-life investigation by Arthur Conan Doyle of a miscarriage of justice, it explores the borderlines of nationality and ethnicity, evidence and imagination, doubt and faith, fact and fiction, endings and beginnings. It underlines the power of narrative to weave a plot from scraps of unsubstantiated information, in which the key factors are conviction and prejudice. Part of the intrigue of the book is directed at the play on distinctions between fact and fabulation, and Barnes seems deeply sceptical throughout his fiction of the notion of an accurate version of events.Less

Fabulation, Narration and the People to Come

Ronald Bogue

in Deleuze and Philosophy

This chapter examines Gilles Deleuze's view on the relationship of politics to art and his thoughts about fabulation and narration. It discusses Deleuze's reflection on the modern problem of the ... More

This chapter examines Gilles Deleuze's view on the relationship of politics to art and his thoughts about fabulation and narration. It discusses Deleuze's reflection on the modern problem of the ‘creation of a people’ and his opinion that an interactive process emerges that connects art and the people when a people begins to take form. It explains that though Deleuze nowhere elaborates at length on the idea of fabulation, it forms part of a rich complex of concepts central to his approach to the ethics and politics of art.Less

‘Inner Necessity’: Fabulation, Frame, and Musical Memory in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang

John Michael Cooper

in Rethinking Mendelssohn

This chapter argues that Felix Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang represents a profound rethinking of the rhetorical and musical processes of the symphony as a genre. Rather than a unilinear array of symphonic ... More

This chapter argues that Felix Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang represents a profound rethinking of the rhetorical and musical processes of the symphony as a genre. Rather than a unilinear array of symphonic movements whose telos is the coda of its finale, the chapter argues, the Lobgesang is a study in symphonic bitemporality—one in which a central, previously enacted parable-like narrative (Nos. 2–8) is framed by a symphonic introduction (No. 1) and a vocal-symphonic conclusion (Nos. 9–10) whose music and theological import derive from the memory of that central narrative. This view of the Lobgesang as a parable enfolded within a sermon is supported by evidence from the work’s compositional history, texts, and tonal structure.Less

Icons of Immanence: Believe the Now-Here, Fabulate the No-Where

Daniel Colucciello Barber

in Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-Secularism and the Future of Immanence

Chapter 6 uses the concept of immanent belief as a means of further articulating the concept of metaphilosophy. Immanent belief is belief that takes as its object not another world, nor a transformed ... More

Chapter 6 uses the concept of immanent belief as a means of further articulating the concept of metaphilosophy. Immanent belief is belief that takes as its object not another world, nor a transformed world, but solely this world as it is. Transcendent determinations of thought’s relation to the world are precluded through the installation of an immanent circuit between thought and the world that affects it. This is an open circuit: the world is too much for thought as it is presently configured, but precisely for this reason the world forces thought to encounter what is unthought in immanence. The chapter shows how the problematisation of relations constituting the present enables the generation of new relations. These new relations – by way of art, philosophy, and fabulation – produce real beings of thought that break with the present.Less

‘Visible Invisibility’ as Machinic Resistance

Christoph Hubatschke

in Deleuze and Anarchism

This chapter discusses Deleuze, Guattari and anarchism in terms of contemporary anarchist praxis. Specifically, Christoph Hubatschke thinks about the politics of the face. In the wake of the events ... More

This chapter discusses Deleuze, Guattari and anarchism in terms of contemporary anarchist praxis. Specifically, Christoph Hubatschke thinks about the politics of the face. In the wake of the events of 1968, Guattari, impressed by this extraordinary revolutionary upheaval, wrote a short text entitled Machine and Structure. In this text, Guattari introduced the notion of the machine for the first time in order to describe a new form of chaosmotic organising – a form of revolutionary politics without a party, without a specified programme and, most importantly, without representation.Less

Conclusion: Fabulation and Epoch(s) to Come

Russell J. Duvernoy

in Affect and Attention After Deleuze and Whitehead: Ecological Attunement

The book concludes by summarizing key implications for ecological attunement in the context of ecological crisis. Though such implications remain resolutely pluralistic, one imperative is challenging ... More

The book concludes by summarizing key implications for ecological attunement in the context of ecological crisis. Though such implications remain resolutely pluralistic, one imperative is challenging the dominance of received norms and cultivating attention to quality and affect prior to their consolidation in such norms. A tactic for this is through cultivating attention to centre-periphery relations and corresponding background-foreground shifts. Finally, Deleuze’s repurposing of Bergson’s concept of fabulation is discussed in the context of resisting hegemonic norms in an affirmative rather than reactionary manner. This notion of fabulation is connected to Whitehead’s discussion of “propositions” and “lures for feeling”. Such affirmative fabulation seeks to create connections across differences rather than consolidate us versus them narratives. This involves an openness to the unexpected and unpredictable rather than the dogma of propagandas or ideological identity.Less

What Does the Polygamist Want?: Frederick Douglass, Joseph Smith, and Marriage at the Edges of the Human

Richard Chamberlain

in Tomorrow's Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter focuses on the consequences of insisting on the necessity, divinity, and world-renovating force of plural marriage by looking at the career of Joseph Smith. He was the founder of the ... More

This chapter focuses on the consequences of insisting on the necessity, divinity, and world-renovating force of plural marriage by looking at the career of Joseph Smith. He was the founder of the Mormon faith, homegrown prophet, polygamist, heretical theologian, and, martyr. The chapter unfolds the implications of Smith's vision for the history of sexuality in nineteenth-century America. He points to how the histories of secularism underwrite histories of sexuality and function to elucidate some forms of sexual subjectivity while occluding others. The chapter argues that polygamy, the defining fabulation of Smith's, seems the proper way to, as he states, “learn how to make yourself Gods” because it expresses how one might live out the unfallenness of his body. In comparison, the chapter examines Frederick Douglass' different imagining of marriage in relation to slavery.Less

Fabulation in Fragments: Leïla Sebbar's Algeria through the Photography of Marc Garanger

in Photo-texts: Contemporary French Writing of the Photographic Image

This chapter examines the tension that appears to exist between Franco-Algerian writer Leïla Sebbar and photographer Marc Garanger, who produced stunning images of the War of Independence in Algeria. ... More

This chapter examines the tension that appears to exist between Franco-Algerian writer Leïla Sebbar and photographer Marc Garanger, who produced stunning images of the War of Independence in Algeria. It considers whether essayistic fabulation is a form of ‘détournement’ of photographic images, in the way that narrative attached to photography might be, and whether essayistic fabulation, by virtue of its essayism, can bring a non-fiction corrective to fiction's ‘dénivelisation’ of photo-texts. The chapter addresses these questions in relation to Sebbar's illicit writing of Garanger's photographs.Less

Abduction

Philippe Lorino

in Pragmatism and Organization Studies

Abduction was introduced by Peirce, first as an abstract logical concept, and secondly as an epistemological model, the first step of inquiry: hypothesizing. In response to doubt, abduction builds a ... More

Abduction was introduced by Peirce, first as an abstract logical concept, and secondly as an epistemological model, the first step of inquiry: hypothesizing. In response to doubt, abduction builds a plausible and testable, but not yet tested, hypothesis. Peirce, in his later writings, outlined the further extension of abduction to the analysis of invention as a social process of action. In this chapter, abduction is characterized as a collective effort to invent new habits for the future. Organization scholars have used this notion for methodological reflection, but rarely involved it when theorizing the emergence of novelty in organizations. After recalling the original logical and epistemological definitions of abduction by Peirce, this chapter presents a case study from the area of urban planning that suggests applying the theory of abduction to organizational or inter-organizational doubtful and exploratory situations. The implications of this view for organization research and managerial practices are discussed.Less

Metamorphosis, Intensity, and Devouring Space: Elements for an Insect Game Theory

Jussi Parikka

in Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology

This chapter discusses the exchange between fabulation and scientific or ethnologic accounts of insects which took place during the first half of the twentieth century. Here, the theme of ... More

This chapter discusses the exchange between fabulation and scientific or ethnologic accounts of insects which took place during the first half of the twentieth century. Here, the theme of metamorphosis is deterritorialized from the biological images of evolution and predetermined development. Metamorphosis marks a defining feature of the image of “insect life”: transformation, development, and change; it is a concept of temporality in which variation becomes a primary feature of “identity.” The chapter states that through notions of metamorphosis and mimicry, entomologically inspired accounts of life and culture also explained new ways of understanding intensities of space and time, prompting various artists such as Jean Painlevé, Franz Kafka, and Lewis Mumford to acknowledge the importance of animal life for their works.Less