Deleuzian Concept Research Articles

유아의 상상력 발현에서 나타나는 리토르넬로 변주의 의미

Objectives This study emphasizes the importance of the manifestation of children's imagination, based on Bachelard's concept of the mobility of matter, while revisiting the concept of children's imagination through Deleuze's artistic philosophy of Retornello, aiming to reveal the creativity and artistry of imagination. Methods The study presents Bachelard's concepts and types of imagination, then organizes Deleuze's concept and characteristics of Retornello based on arrangement and materialism, and subsequently explains three variations of Retornello distinguished by arrangement and artistic trends. Following this, the study analyzes how Ritornello is varied in actual imaginative play based on excerpts from previous studies on the manifestation of children's imagination. Results Examples of imaginative play between children and puddles illustrate the movement of arrangement and material. Firstly, the ‘Puddle-Classicist Ritornello’ began by encountering various forms of puddles, showcasing the harmonious relationship between form and material, and expanding imagination through these encounters. Secondly, by abandoning the forms of puddles shaped by weather and water, and focusing on the essential materials of the puddle, children’s imagination transformed into the ‘Canals and Indoor Puddles-Romanticist Ritornello.’ Thirdly, by completely shedding the form of the puddle and concentrating on the molecular material of the puddle, the variation of imaginative ritornello reached its climax, presenting the pinnacle of the ‘Modernist Ritornello.’ Conclusions The creativity of imagination through Bachelard's materialistic movements and the artistry of Retornello through its materialistic mobility are interpreted within the same context. In other words, imagination signifies both creativity and artistic mental activity, and furthermore, imaginative play and life can be creative and artistic. Thus, by examining the relationships among children's lives, play, imagination, and the artistry of Ritornello, the study proposes discussions on how children's lives can be artistic.

'Becoming restrained': Conceptualising restrictive practices in the care of people living with dementia in acute hospital settings.

The use of restrictive practices within health and social care has attracted policy and practice attention, predominantly focusing on children and young people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities and autism. However, despite growing appreciation of the need to improve care quality for people living with dementia (PLWD), the potentially routine use of restrictive practices in their care has received little attention. PLWD are at significant risk of experiencing restrictive practices during unscheduled acute hospital admissions. In everyday routine hospital care of PLWD, concerns about subtle and less visible forms of restrictive practices and their impacts remain. This article draws on Deleuze's concepts of 'assemblage' and 'event' to conceptualise restrictive practices as institutional, interconnection social and political attitudes and organisational cultural practices. We argue that this approach illuminates the diverse ways restrictive practices are used, legitimatised and perpetuated in the care of PLWD. We examine restrictive practices in acute care contexts, understanding their use requires examining the wider socio-political, organisational cultures and professional practice contexts in which clinical practices occurs. Whereas 'events' and 'assemblages' have predominantly been used to examine embodied entanglements in diverse health contexts, examining restrictive practices as a structural assemblage extends the application of this theoretical framework.

Reading Shakespeare's As You Like It from Deleuze's minor concept

Reading Shakespeare's As You Like It from Deleuze's minor concept

Detecting falsehoods: History and mafia in the work of Leonardo Sciascia and Sebastiano Vassalli

This article explores points of contact in the work of Leonardo Sciascia (1921–1989) and Sebastiano Vassalli (1941–2015) through historical novels with Sciascia's La strega e il capitano (1986) and Vassalli's La chimera (1990) as well as in their accounts of the mafia in Sciascia's Il giorno della civetta (1972) and Vassalli's Il cigno (1993). Deleuze's conception of falsehood as an essential structural element of crime fiction serves as a mechanism to highlight both authors’ intolerance of false histories and the deliberate obfuscation of the collusion between mafia and the State in Sicily and beyond. While the two writers were often ideologically aligned, Vassalli's narration of the mafia in Il cigno, and his subsequent criticism of Sicilian authors who had failed to ‘impugnare il bisturi’ and expose the true nature of the mafia, created a literary polemic. A debate ensued in the public domain, centering Sciascia in a discussion of positionality and questioning whether Vassalli had the authority to venture opinions on Sicilian matters. This controversy served to revive concerns about the role of literature in creating a coherent national identity or stoking regionalism, while simultaneously problematizing the role of the author as detective able to shed light on intractable problems.

Troubling and diffracting Winnicott’s pioneering approach to playing through Deleuze’s ontology for early childhood education

ABSTRACT This paper diffracts Deleuze and quantum physics through Winnicott’s work to argue for an enrichment to playing. The roots of the play-cognitive hierarchy in Freudian psychoanalysis makes visible that progression and the stages that a child must pass en route to rationality continue to feed educational assumptions that a child must leave playing behind in order to learn. Addressing critiques of Freud’s psychosexual theory of child development, I introduce Winnicott’s work on playing as creative activity and transitional phenomena which cast playing in a positive light. I then turn to Deleuze’s critique of Freud’s foundational concepts of child development influenced by Newtonian physics to argue that a Deleuzian concept of energy aligns with quantum physics, which unsettles the binary play-cognition hierarchy. I introduce a vignette to illustrate a rich array of concepts involved in playing that are read through Winnicott. In the final step, I argue that Winnicott’s transitional object provides a juncture with Deleuze’s concept of the partial/virtual object paving the way to graft an alternative and more processual ontology onto Winnicott’s work on playing that acts beside cognitive connections in ways that bring learning alive and liberate teachers to enter less constrained relationships with children.

The Empirical Phenomenology of Child Doodling, from the Viewpoint of Deleuzian Concept of “Expression”

The Empirical Phenomenology of Child Doodling, from the Viewpoint of Deleuzian Concept of “Expression”

Returning or not returning: desire, becoming and decisions following PhD completion

ABSTRACT This paper aims to uncover the meanings of the decisions of a group of Vietnamese women doctoral students and academics following the completion of their doctoral studies in Australia. Drawing on interview data with the women and the Deleuzian concept of desire, this paper highlights that their decisions are generated within multiple power relations related to unequal educational resources, contemporary practices of competition across higher education contexts and individual backgrounds of the women. The women navigated through their experiences, challenging and disrupting such power relations while aspiring to become otherwise. The paper suggests how to gear returning mechanism to facilitate the movement of academic knowledge across spaces.

Becoming temporarily protected, producing temporarily protecting places: how Syrian refugee women and children co-create place in Istanbul

ABSTRACT The paper examines the usefulness of the Deleuzian concepts of smooth space and stratified space while capturing the experiences of refugee women and children as non-citizens under the temporary protection regime in Istanbul. Deleuze and Guattari, in their book ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, describe smooth space as the territory of the nomads, those who do not fit in neatly into forms of identity and division. Striated space on the other hand is created by the sedentary, the state, with an interest in blocking the speed of flows, movements of elements not rooted in a supposedly homogenous whole. Many refugee children acquire by birth the legal status of being under temporary protection, a liminal position which for many turns into a life-long arrangement. How do refugee women and children re-create community and culture as bounded to a place? What kind of space delivers itself to being transformed into a place of belonging for them? To work through these questions, interview data from several Syrian women and three Syrian children gathered through semi-structured interviews are embedded in the observations of social workers and psychologists working at the Kizilay community Centre the informants frequent in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul Province in Turkey.

악기를 활용한 유아음악활동에 관한 탐구

The purpose of this study is to examine the musical experience of young children from the perspective of Deleuze's philosophy and to understand the events and meanings generated from the encounters between young children and musical instruments. To this end, 10 children aged 3-5 in a mixed class of a daycare center were observed participating in special music activities for about 4 months, and as a kind of post-qualitative research method, Deleuze's philosophical concepts were used for analyzing the data generated. As a result of the study, young children created new meanings through various sensory encounters in music activities using musical instruments, and invented their own musical styles through creative experiments and expressions. In addition, the children's musical instrument activities were interpreted as the meaning of new creation through agential practices of musical ‘becoming.’ Based on these results, it was suggested that looking at young children's musical activities with an open eye by focusing on their encounters with materials and relationships, and moving from the standardized teaching approaches to new meanings created by musical instruments through philosophical thinking.

İnsan Sonrası Beden: Biyo(Teknolojik)-Sanatta Post-Dualistik bir Kendilik

The body has always been the subject of discussions whether in ancient, modern or posthuman times. In these discussions, it has been instrumentalized, domesticized, and even cursed or glorified, mostly through the dualisms such as mind/body, soul/body and self/other. Posthuman thought criticizes this dualistic comprehension for the body and proposes a post-dualistic understanding. This post-dualism blurs the distinctions starting from the ones between the human and machine, human and animal for a posthuman body. This study approaches the posthuman body as a post-dualistic entity as well. Through a qualitative research method, the academic literature was reviewed concerning the prominent debates on these issues and discussed the findings with the practical works of art. Primarily, Donna Haraway’s arguments on the body with the notion of cyborg and Katherine N. Hayles’ concept of posthuman were examined for building a basis of the research. At the intersection of these concepts, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming and becoming-machine notion were explored. Becoming-machine not only relates to Body without Organs (BwO), but also emerges as a developed concept for posthuman in Rosi Braidotti’s texts too. Braidotti interprets this Deleuzian concept in a critical posthuman perspective and proposes a new notion as Organs without Bodies. This concept connects to BwO with its criticism on organism and also benefits from Foucault’s arguments for biopower and biopolitics. So, Braidotti discusses Foucault’s arguments on modernity to develop a criticism on biotechnological capitalism. Therefore, this research aims to discuss these interrelated critical subjects through biotechnological manifestations in contemporary art. In this scope, the purpose of this study is to interpret critical issues on the body from an interdisciplinary point of view and contribute to the academic literature with an alternative discussion mentioning the post-dualistic possibilities of the posthuman body.

IDENTITY THROUGH DIFFERENCE IN BEAT FURRER'S LOTÓFAGOS

AbstractIn Homer's The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are on their way home to Ithaca when they land on a remote island inhabited by lotus-eaters. The locals share their indolent-making lotus plants with the Greeks, such that the troops’ homeward journey is disrupted and they find themselves in a state of limbo. Identities, both individual and communal, become entangled and blurred. Beat Furrer takes these sorts of uncertainties of self as inspiration in his Lotófagos (2007) – that is, Lotus-eaters – scored for soprano and double bass, which sets José Ángel Valente's poem of the same name. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's conception of bodies, this article argues that the identity of an elusive but persistent collective subject in Valente's text can be found within the difference between the two performers’ bodies in Furrer's setting. The pair's movements weave in and out of each other, moving through spectres of each other's material, fleetingly suggesting cohesion through tension before jettisoning this for what contextually appears as relief. As such, the series of surreptitious vignettes presents a ‘conatus’ of the piece defined by tension, emulation and transience; Furrer's Lotófagos creates space for Valente's mysterious subject to be presented as the immanence of forces between two performing bodies.

Percepts, affects, clinamen: Alienation and entanglement in What Time Is It There? (2001)

This article takes as its starting point an uncanny dialectics of alienation, desire and connection that permeates Tsai Ming-liang’s oeuvre. Through approaching the non-intersecting parallel narratives in What Time Is It There? (2001) with the Epicurean and Lucretian notion of clinamen and the Deleuzian concepts of any-space-whatevers, percepts and affects, this article explores the relation between non-intersecting parallel spaces and times and a liminal, spectral cinematic space and time that is created by moving images themselves, which makes the dialectics of alienation and connection possible. This article argues that What Time involves Tsai’s meta-cinematic approach to cinema’s potentiality that enables both characters and spectators to engage directly with moving images and reimagine the world through its spectrality and non-human perception.

Intentional Automobility: Mobility Choice Between Socialist and Postsocialist Chrononormativity

This article responds to the uncritical use of chronological time and the strict division between past, present, and future when thinking about mobility behavior or mobility decisions. On the basis of this critique, it introduces the concept of intentional automobility, which relies on the Bergsonian–Deleuzian conception of time—duration (la durée). It shows that transport-mode decisions are not only made in the present, separated from the past and the future, but that the past and the future are part of every such decision. Using the example of the metropolitan area of Brno, Czech Republic, a postsocialist space, we show how differently socialist and postsocialist societies can be temporally normalized. At the same time, contemporary postsocialist mobility decisions are still influenced by socialist time norms—chrononormatives. Our main research question is how everyday mobility decisions between the car and public transport are influenced by the temporal norms of the society. To answer this question, we have employed a mixed methods research design that has been divided into a quantitative analysis of mode choice for individual trips and a qualitative analysis of statements about mode choice. Key findings include the relationship between transport-mode preference and a particular chrononormative. We identify four contexts—time, routing, alcohol, and everyday activity planning—in which the chrononormatives associated with the car and public transport are substitutable. It is on this basis that we introduce intentional automobility.

Habit, Artificial Intelligence and the Ontological Performance of Trust

The rapid growth of AI technologies has led to increased concerns around their perceived trustworthiness. In response, many authors have turned to the predictable rituals and routines of habit as a crucial resource for enhancing trust in these new technologies. This paper revisits the relationship between habit and trust, but from the perspective of the more ontological and dynamic understanding developed on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. We argue that Deleuze's concept of habit challenges the cognitivist emphases of writings on trust and AI, providing a means instead of accounting for trust in terms of an ontological performance that no longer assumes a pre-existing subject. We unpack the implications of such an approach in three main ways. First, we highlight how the originality of Deleuze's approach to habit lies in its insistence that the material contractions of habit enjoy an ontological primacy in relation to the human subject, thus entailing a radically materialist gesture that refuses conventional metaphysical distinctions between the human and the differential forces of matter. Second, we explore how the material contractions of habit, for Deleuze, engender a simultaneous contemplation of an ecology of affects that sit beneath the level of conscious thought. This offers a sense of trust in human–technology relations as being as much an affective capacity as it is a cognitive attitude, being shaped by the performance of unconscious forces and intensities. And finally, we argue that Deleuze's understanding of habit as a fundamentally dynamic process spotlights how trust is itself a creative achievement predicated on an openness to an unknown future. This is important ethically because it pushes understanding of trust in AI beyond a moral didacticism of whether such systems are 'Good' or 'Bad', towards more immanent modes of evaluation sensitive to their capacities to incite new possibilities of thinking and relating.

Is the virtual of virtual technologies the Deleuzian virtual?

Gilles Deleuze has become a key reference for the recent debate on virtual technologies, as his conception of the virtual is widely used to argue for the reality of virtuality. Nonetheless some scholars, among which Slavoj Žižek stands out, have warned about the risks of flattening the Deleuzian concept on the tech debate. This paper aims to show why the two concepts of the virtual do not overlap by explaining some features of the Deleuzian virtual that make it incompatible with virtual media. Namely, its intensive dimension, its relationship with the possible and its imperceptible nature. The paper will also claim how differentiating the two concepts opens up wider applications for the Deleuzian virtual while, at the same time, lightening the tech debate of its ontological burden, allowing to approach the issues of virtual technologies from a more fruitful perspective – that is to say, their pictorial functioning.

Deleuze’s Conception of Virtuality Versus Virtual Computer Objects

AbstractIs Gilles Deleuze’s concept of virtuality sufficiently close to the concept of virtuality used in informatics and the philosophy of information for computer-created objects and virtual reality to justify the latter’s explanation by means of the former? This question is the main objective of the present paper. We aim to show that, contrary to its most widespread interpretations, the Deleuzian conception of virtuality is epistemological and not ontological, and that this invalidates the belief that Deleuze’s virtuality and that of computer science are sufficiently close to justify the transposition of one to the other.

Crafting Care through Text and Subtitles

This paper investigates the underappreciated, yet integral role of text, subtitles, and intertitles in the realms of interactive films and multimedia storytelling, employing a unique lens of craft, collaboration, and care. Drawing from Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'speech-act' and The Care Collective's interpretation of care, the study explores the use of written text as a tool that guides the narrative, widens accessibility, and promotes justice and equity in viewing experiences. The complexity of the subtitling process, going beyond mere translation, is highlighted. Delving into Deleuze's concept of 'scriptual', the paper outlines how reading subtitles adds a layer of abstract universality to films, demanding more than passive consumption from viewers. Analyzing the dynamics and impacts of subtitles in interactive films, it underscores their critical role in shaping viewer comprehension and perception. The exploration of five interactive projects – 4Stelle Hotel (2014), Life on Hold (2015), "The Displaced" (2015), Sea Prayer (2018), and Another Dream (2019) – offers concrete illustrations of how subtitles and intertitles contribute to creating sensory, caring, and emotional experiences, facilitating viewer engagement and understanding. By enhancing navigation and narrativity, this paper argues that subtitles and text can nurture a culture of care, aligning with the principles of The Care Manifesto. The conclusion brings focus on the affect and sensation in relation to written text and subtitles. Recognizing viewer agency in interpreting narrative, it emphasizes the potential of text and subtitles to catalyze dialogue, shared experiences, and a sense of care and connection among viewers. The paper further underscores the role of subtitles and intertitles as conduits, amplifying audiences' sensory and emotional experiences and fostering a deeper understanding of characters, cultural nuances, and broader social, cultural, and political realities. The potential of these interactive experiences to stimulate political engagement is also discussed, marking a new benchmark in the cinematic experience. Subtitles have a transformative impact on the audience's agency. They not only serve as linguistic translation tools but also as conduits that imbue the narrative and characters with immediacy, individuality, and complexity. This assists the audience in navigating the intricacies of the story, unlocking hidden layers of meaning, and understanding cultural nuances. This enhanced comprehension grants viewers agency in directing their choices and interpretations, fostering a more profound connection with the story and its characters. In summary, this study underscores the significance of integrating text and subtitles in interactive film projects, accentuating their capacity to foster inclusivity, collaboration, and care within the narrative. It presents a compelling case for filmmakers and media professionals to design text and subtitle systems that enrich the viewing experience, disrupt uncaring societal structures, and, ultimately, contribute to a more empathetic and inclusive world.

Becoming bamboo: Reassessing Su Shi's painting theory from Deleuze's angle

AbstractThis article aims to elucidate the Chinese literatus Su Shi's painting theory using French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concepts of “capturing forces” and “becoming.” In the relevant scholarship, Su Shi's esthetic thought has been illustrated as going beyond the truthful representation of forms, thereby capturing the underlying vitality of the targeted objects, which paved the way for what came to be known as “literati painting.” This artistic approach has been thought to express the artist's lofty and virtuous personality through the liveliness of the objects. I fully embrace the “capturing vitality” part of the literature, further fleshing it out not just by closely analyzing some of Su Shi's extant writings on painting but also by assessing them side by side with such European painters as Paul Cézanne and Francis Bacon. However, I find the “expressing personality” counterpart to be rather limited for interpreting Su Shi's esthetic thought and instead suggest the artistic effect of “becoming” as central to his ultimate esthetic aims.

Dividual Film Aesthetics

The term “dividual” aims to present a critical view of the Western conception of persons and artworks as individuals. It is used in Euro-American anthropology in order to analyze the practical and ethical interferences between single persons and communities mainly in non-Western cultures. It is also used by Gilles Deleuze in Cinema 1. The Movement-Image in order to describe the aesthetic and self-affective character of films: since the filmic images cannot be temporarily fixed and individualized, he calls them “dividual”, much like contemporary plurivocal musical compositions. He reads their articulations as transitions between temporarily varying semiotic combinations; thus, they are not “‘divisible or indivisible’, but ‘dividual.’”(14) Referring to this Deleuzian concept, I want to delve into different films under this aesthetic perspective, exposing their character of mutual allusions and formal adaptations: from a docufiction by Jean Rouch to feature films by Jean-Luc Godard, Med Hondo and Jean-Pierre Bekolo. These films dividuate themselves due to their aesthetic interferences and the curious observation that certain European film styles were “invented” in an African context.

We are all the Smallest Woman in the World

This essay explores the place in Clarice Lispector’s literature that seeks to touch a primary ground of the living with a language that exceeds the symbolic in order to read it from an anthropocenic, posthuman, and feminist present. It argues that the story “A menor mulher do mundo” (Laços de família, 1960) takes to an extreme what happens in all of Lispector’s literature at the point that we can find in Macabéa’s character from A hora da estrela (1976), a sort of continuation of the smallest woman in the world. In both – the story and the novel – materiality comes to life and it is associated with a neutral background that goes beyond the difference between the human and the nonhuman, the feminine and the masculine, and that coincides with language, with the word. Both characters are residue and resistance, and operate in the stories in the same way that the word operates in Lispector’s writing. The Deleuzian concept of minor and its continuation on the concept of immanence are therefore read not only as a way to think beyond the species, but also as that which operates by destabilizing the concept of “woman” as a universal. Lispector’s writing, then, allows us to separate contemporary feminisms from an affirmation of the identity of the feminine and the masculine, to take them instead into an order that – regardless of whether embodied in woman – is outside the patriarchal.