Deleuze and the Humanities: East and West (Continental Philosophy in Austral-Asia) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1786606003 ISBN 13: 9781786606006

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (UK), 2018

Synopsis

The volume is inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project, which builds on the critique of European Humanism and opens up inspiring new perspectives for the renewal of the field. The book gathers leading scholars in the field of Deleuze, while also bringing together scholars from Europe and North America (the West), as well from Asia (the East), in order to create a lively academic debate, and contribute to the growth and expansion of the field.

It provides both critical and creative insights into some key issues in contemporary social and political thought. More specifically, the volume hopes to start a critical evaluation of the reception and creative adaptation of Deleuze and of other Continental philosophers in the Austral-Asian region, with special focus on China.

About this title

About the Authors

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University.Her most recent books are : Posthuman Knowledge (Polity, 2019), The Posthuman Glossary (coedited with M Hlavajova, Bloomsbury 2018), Posthuman Ecologies (coedited with S. Bignall, Rowman &Littlefield 2019) and Conflicting Humanities (coedited with P Gilroy, Bloomsbury 2016). Amy K.S. Chan is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.

Kin Yuen Wong is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Shue Yan University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Deleuze and the Humanities

East and West

By Rosi Braidotti, Kin Yuen Wong, Amy Kit-sze Chan

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2018 Rosi Braidotti, Kin Yuen Wong and Amy Kit-sze Chan
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78660-600-6

Contents

Chapter-by-Chapter Synopsis, vii, 
Acknowledgements, xv, 
1 Introduction Rosi Braidotti, Amy Kit-sze Chan and Kin Yuen Wong, 1, 
2 Defamiliarization and the Act of Reading World Literature Grant Hamilton, 11, 
3 Transversally Yours: Deleuzian Love and Taoist Qing Sebastian Hsien-Hao Liao, 27, 
4 Deleuze and Ikeda: Two Concepts of Revolution Tony See, 45, 
5 An Encounter with Lufsig: Political Affect Meets the Nomadic Post-Colonial Subject Evelyn Wan, 59, 
6 Deleuze, the Image of Thought and Art: Representation and the Meaning of Art in Henry James's 'The Real Thing' Jason Cham Sum Leung, 79, 
7 Staging Attempts on Her Life in Taiwan: Kimmy Liu's Production at Nanhai Gallery Lia Wen-Ching Liang, 93, 
8 Two Meditations on 'Becoming-Animal', Territory and the Origin of the Artwork Gregg Lambert, 109, 
9 Classical Chinese Medicine and the New Humanities Amy Kit-sze Chan, 121, 
10 The Yin-Yang Assemblage and Deleuze's Transcendental Empiricism: How Daoism Became Posthuman Kin Yuen Wong, 139, 
11 Getting In and Within: Matter-Realist Feminism, Deleuze and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Clara Hei Man Tang and Cynthia Wing Nga Lam, 173, 
12 Bringing Them into the Fold: Deleuze, Francis Bacon and Three Images for an East-West Humanities Michael O'Sullivan, 185, 
Index, 195, 
About the Contributors, 205, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Rosi Braidotti, Amy Kit-sze Chan and Kin Yuen Wong

If Foucault's prediction that 'one day, the century will be Deleuzian'1 is to gain any credibility in our globally interconnected and mediated world, the question of the inter-relations between Western and Asian philosophies needs to come centre stage. It is less a question of developing comparative perspectives – which would inevitably raise issues of common standards, hierarchies of values and power relations – than of composing together margins of overlapping concerns and webs of shared cultural and ethical passions. This is why we wanted this book to happen as a trans-disciplinary philosophical event. Deleuze's philosophy is very well known across Asia, as testified by the large number of scholarly conferences dedicated to his work, and his theory of subjectivity has been discussed at length in contemporary scholarship across the world. It is however the case that not enough attention has been paid to the specific relationship of Deleuze's philosophy of Life and difference, to the naturalistic and holistic traditions of Asian and notably Chinese philosophy. While carefully avoiding any attempt at a cultural synthesis, this volume stresses the multiple convergences between Buddhism and Daoism on the one hand and Deleuze's ecosophy and vital materialism on the other. Our volume pursues these lines of encounter and enquiry in a rigorous, critical and yet creative way. First, it gathers leading scholars in the transdisciplinary field of Deleuze scholarship, in full respect of the tradition of academic excellence. Second, it brings in scholars from Europe and other regions who have not yet been heard very much in Asia, and vice versa, so as to contribute to the growth and expansion of the international academic debates. Third, it contributes to a critical evaluation of the reception and creative adaptation of Deleuze and of other continental philosophers in the Austral-Asian region, with special focus on China.

The project took off from Deleuze and Guattari's idea that the task of thinking is to create new concepts, an idea which we consider as a great source of inspiration not only for critical theory but also for the humanities in the contemporary world. This definition further supports the parallelism between philosophy, science and the arts, dear to Deleuze and Guattari's hearts. The equal worth attributed to these domains, however, is not to be mistaken for a flattening out of the differences between them but should rather be seen as a way of stressing the unity of purpose among the three branches of knowledge. Deleuze and Guattari take care to stress the differences between the distinctive styles of intelligence that philosophy, science and the arts, respectively, embody. They also argue, however, that they remain indexed on a common plane of intensive, self-transforming life energy. This continuum sustains the ontology of becoming, that is, the conceptual motor of both nomad and critical posthuman thought.

In so far as science has to come to terms with the real physical processes of an actualized and defined world, it is less open to the processes of becoming or differentiation that characterize Deleuze's monistic ontology. Philosophy is at an advantage, being a subtler tool for the probing intellect, one that is more attuned to the virtual plane of immanence and the unstoppable force of a generative universe, or 'chaosmosis', which is nonhuman and in constant flux. The arts, however, have a head start in sustaining intensities and creating affective territories of encounter with the virtual potential of life.

For Deleuze, as a radical neo-Spinozist, thinking is the conceptual counterpart of the ability to enter modes of relation, to affect and be affected. The point of thinking is to equip us with the capacity to sustain qualitative shifts and creative tensions, in a manner that echoes the artist's approach and matches the intensive prerogative of art. Critical theory therefore has a major role to play in helping us enter into these encounters and, just as importantly, to sustain them. In other words: the monistic ontology that sustains this vision of life as vitalist, self-organizing matter also allows the critical thinker to reunite the different branches of philosophy, the sciences and the arts in a new alliance. We believe such a transversal re-composition of knowledge is necessary in view of the staggering advances in knowledge production that are occurring today and not only in the sciences and the technological fields but also right across the social and cultural spectrum. We also think that they can be inspirational for the contemporary university as a whole and for the humanities in particular.

The edited volume we are presenting here is the result of sustained creative relationality: it is the product of intensive intellectual cooperation and conceptual affinity that propelled us in the direction of productive and hybrid cross-pollination. The co-operation culminated in an international conference that took place in Hong Kong and focused on the engagement between Asian thought and Deleuzian philosophy. It gathered multiple, situated East-West scholars and explored several applications of nomadic thought. This diverse, but focused, assembly was able to compose and reflect a privileged site of intercultural exploration with a range of interlocking themes, privilege in the sense of both the unique location of Hong Kong and its timeliness in the twenty-first century and beyond.

This collection of chapters is consequently framed by an ongoing international dialogue about the multifaceted ways in which Deleuze's philosophy offers key navigational tools to confront the intellectual and institutional challenges of our times – both in the East and in the West. One of the transversal lines of enquiry of this book is the question of how the traditional humanities may be revitalized specifically through an emphasis on a nomadic encounter between the East and the West. The volume therefore contains many contributions that aim at mapping and/or recreating the cultural boundaries and intellectual trading zones between these vast and complex regions. In this regard, the nomadic approach provides a productive methodology that allows researchers to open up the boundaries of their expertise and vested research interests and to encounter new perspectives. This opening up of relational exchanges allows for experiments with new concepts so as to create interassemblages between them: a mutual en- and unfolding of possibilities. It is this volume's mission to dislocate any sense of unitary disciplinary identity and cultural centrism, while relocating the very boundaries and areas of these encounters or interfaces within the context of a globalized, intercultural and sustainable nomadology in the twenty-first century. Let us rhizome together!

The chapters gathered here therefore offer zig-zagging itineraries across a thousand plateaus of East-West encounters within the classical humanities – notably literary theory, comparative literature, art history and criticism. They also move across interdisciplinary and more recent fields of scholarship, such as cultural, media and performance studies, to touch on issues of gender, sexuality and multicultural identities. This double movement opens towards over-arching concerns about the mission of contemporary cultural criticism and even more broadly towards the critical function of the humanities in today's world.

This transversal cross-disciplinary approach marks the Deleuzian signature of this volume, which explores the resonances and interconnections of nomadic themes and posthuman approaches across the humanities, in order to elaborate new collaborative strategies. The questions that organized this aspect of our enquiry are as follows: How do contemporary discourses and practices in the humanities East and West interfere with each other? What are the potentials as well as the limits of trans-disciplinary connections and methods? Considering the immense imaginary force of literature and the arts, to what extent can the minor/minoritarian turn in literary and cultural criticism, and revitalize the practice of the contemporary humanities?

Furthermore, assuming that we have entered the era of the 'Anthropocene', 5 which combines staggering technological advances with the depletion of resources and earth species, threatening even human survival, how does the project of working towards a sustainable posthuman and nomadic subjectivity help redefine a post-anthropocentric notion of inter-dependence without hierarchies? What kind of discourses and institutional practices could do justice to the affective and transformative alliances involving both human and non-human (both organic and technological) actors? How can we re-imagine the academic humanities as a community constructed through the method of 'transversal intercultural assemblages'? Last but not least, what are the specific contributions of feminist and post-colonial theorists and activists to the debate on Deleuze scholarship in Asia, about the 'New' humanities and concerning the posthuman turn?

The volume contributors profile themselves at the background of ongoing theoretical and methodological discussions guided by a posthuman, global and transformative perspective that is re-defining the ways in which we experience and represent the relation between the human and the non-human agents. This displacement of methodological anthropocentrism unfolds differently in the Asian context than within the European tradition and it has deep consequences for the humanities. We humans are representational beings, having the habit of saying 'I', and we tend to rely on an assumption that the world is constructed through our language and culture. We do not think of plants, molecules and machines to grant them some kind of culture or a world of their own.

The material presented in this volume proves that the humanities in the posthuman era of the Anthropocene are not sticking to the human – let alone 'man' or 'anthropos' – as its proper object of study. On the contrary, the field is benefitting by being free from the empire of humanist man, so as to be able to access in a post-anthropocentric manner issues of external and even planetary importance, such as scientific and technological advances, ecological and social sustainability and the multiple challenges of globalization. Such a change of focus requires assistance from other social and scientific actors as well as the research community.

This volume actively argues that Deleuze's philosophical critique of European Humanism opens up new perspectives for the academic practice of the humanities. Because Deleuze's philosophy engages extensively with the nonhuman – events, actors and time-frames – it has the ability to renew the agenda of the humanities in a productive manner. Questions of humanism, but also of anti-humanism and of posthumanism, but also post-anthropocentrism add a critical dimension to Deleuze's thought. How is Deleuze's thought contributing to the debate on the value of the 'human' and of 'humanism' in the humanities, in the East and the West?

What comes after the humanist subject of knowledge? How do Deleuzian 'becomings' help sustain alternative processes of subjectification? What are their implications for globalized and sustainable higher education towards nomadic subjectivity? What are the methodological premises?

The implications of these new approaches are explored in the different contributions of this volume, in a variety of disciplinary fields, from literature to the arts, media and cultural criticism, politics and ethics. This is how the volume is organized:

In his opening and agenda-setting chapter, 'Defamiliarization and the Act of Reading World Literature', Grant Hamilton outlines a confronting new posthuman critical theory, which has the potential to renew not only the function of criticism itself but also the mission of the humanities today. The features of posthuman criticism according to Hamilton, inspired by Braidotti, are as follows: ethical accountability, methodological trans-disciplinarity and the imperative of bringing together critique and creativity, the championing of non-linearity and the associated sites of memory and the imagination. A crucial tool is the productive act of defamiliarization, which in the work of Deleuze is rendered as 'stuttering'. Hamilton applies this notion to the analysis of 'world literature' and more specifically to the literary terrain of Singapore. This is an experience which is likely to throw the readers out of their expected comfort zones. Far from being a negative state, defamiliarization is defended as an unanticipated and undirected becoming and shown to be the genesis of 'the new' – new understanding, new perspectives and new ideas.

In 'Transversally Yours: Deleuzian Love and Taoist Qing', Sebastian Hsien-Hao Liao addresses the relatively under-discussed issue of love in Deleuze, that is to say the encounter with the otherwise Other, which 'expresses a possible world'. As a disruptive, but productive, force, love breaks up the stabilized identity, the boundaries between subject and object established by the Western philosophical tradition and provides the possibility of creation and novelty. This relational and transversal ethics connects all entities while fully respecting differences. The distinction between the human and the non-human forms of love compares fruitfully with the Taoist concept of qing or feeling, which also distinguishes between the 'human qing' and the non-human or transhuman 'Tao qing'. In both the Deleuzian and Taoist systems, the non-human or transhuman form of love (or 'schizo love') belies the naturalness and stability of human consciousness and its accompanying values and allows access to an ontological truth, often called 'life' by Deleuze, that facilitates deeper connections between singularities. This transhuman form of love also ensures constant becoming of the individual and enables animate as well as inanimate others to become.

Tony See in 'Deleuze and Ikeda: Two Concepts of Revolution' seeks to bridge the chasm between Deleuze's theory of the subject and notions of subjectivity in Buddhist phenomenology. Both approaches deny a permanent substance in favour of a becoming subject that is 'representation-only' (weishi: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]): instead of a unitary and unchanging subject, there is an assemblage of heterogeneous and changing elements that is always under construction. By exploring the resonances between Deleuze's theory of subjectivity with the idea of 'self' or subjectivity in Mahayana Buddhism, Tony See argues that there are deep resonances particularly between Deleuze's idea of revolution and the idea of a 'revolutionary subject' in Mahayana Buddhism. The author aims to contribute towards a thoughtful and mutually informing discourse between Deleuze Studies and Buddhist Studies, thereby bringing about a revitalization of the humanities in an age of capitalist domination and technological possession.

Evelyn Wan in 'An Encounter with Lufsig: Political Affect Meets the Nomadic Post-Colonial Subject' focuses upon the affective force of Lufsig in its encounters with the political subjectivities of Hong Kong's resisting citizens. The IKEA doll is taken as an assemblage of symbols, narratives, locations and languages – from a Swedish company, with a French/European fairy tale narrative, a (badly) translated Chinese name and so on, which turns into an agent of affective force and humour as well as anger and frustration. Wan studies the stuffed toy as a symbol for Hong Kong's political subjecthood and activism and a rhizomatic site of solidarity and resistance. Lufsig thus becomes a political figuration, like Donna Haraway's cyborg, or Braidotti's 'nomadic subjects' that acts a performative figuration for unlikely encounters and creative becomings, and also reflects the complex power configurations in the post-colonial/metropolitan/multilingual city. By arguing that the highly popular IKEA doll composes an assemblage of forces beyond the subject/object divide and that it activates an affective politics, the chapter explores the mutual imbrication of the social and somatic in forming a transversal body politic.

In 'Deleuze, the Image of Thought and Art: Representation and the Meaning of Art in Henry James's "The Real Thing" ', Jason Cham Sum Leung reflects on Deleuze's idea of 'image of thought', from the perspective of art and brings it to bear on a cross-analysis of Chinese art forms and the concept of hua yi. Leung argues that Deleuze's critique of the representational theory of thought is foundational not only for his philosophy of positive difference but also as a redefinition of the role of art itself. This case is illustrated firstly with a discussion on Henry James's short story 'The Real Thing', in which the dilemma of the artist in creative production reflects more fundamental issues in art, namely, the tension between the artist's awareness of the rigidity of representation and the powers of difference. It is further explored in the analysis of Chinese art in the form of classical paintings, through a discussion of the concept of hua yi ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which literally means the meaning of a picture but can be seen as a way of perceiving art and connecting the artist and the viewer. The author concludes that this transversal relationality is what art itself aims at, as a compound of sensations which open up new ways of seeing and generates new images of thought.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Deleuze and the Humanities by Rosi Braidotti, Kin Yuen Wong, Amy Kit-sze Chan. Copyright © 2018 Rosi Braidotti, Kin Yuen Wong and Amy Kit-sze Chan. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (UK)
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1786606003
• ISBN 13: 9781786606006
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 222
• Editor: Rosi Braidotti, Amy K. S. Chan, Kin Yuen Wong