Reading Of Bergson Research Articles

Virtuality and immanence in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty

In this paper we aim to find a definition of virtual which fits the latest developments of digital technology, but also applies to the analog world. We consider the virtual as related to immanence, taking inspiration from Deleuze’s reading of Bergson and Merleau-Ponty’s last work. We first analyze Deleuze’s idea of immanence, from which virtuality emerges, then we focus on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh and its virtual center. We argue that both philosophers see immanence as a dynamic medium of virtuality, overcoming the traditional concept of substance and theorizing a deep intertwining of bodies and technology. Our analysis shows that the virtual is defined by the following features: it implies an epistemological and ontological monism, relationality, and entanglement with reality. The virtual clearly emerges in digital technologies, but also belongs to analog reality, as a general condition for our knowing and being in the world as such.

Bento Prado Jr. entre Bergson e Wittgenstein

Meu propósito neste texto é duplo: 1) pretendo mostrar que a leitura de Bergson e Wittgenstein feita por Bento Prado Jr. é motivada por uma mesma questão filosófica, a saber: qual é o destino da ilusão transcendental kantiana na filosofia contemporânea?; 2) retomando a comparação entre os dois autores sugerida por Bento, pretendo colocar duas perguntas: será que, sob a aparente proximidade entre Bergson e Wittgenstein no tratamento da questão mencionada, não se esconde uma divergência intransponível entre esses autores? Será que, seguindo o espírito da leitura e apropriação da filosofia wittgensteiniana por Bento, não seria necessário recusar o bergsonismo em nome da concepção terapêutica de filosofia de Wittgenstein? Pretendo mostrar que ambas as questões devem ser respondidas afirmativamente. Isso coloca um problema para a reflexão de Bento sobre a questão inicial, uma vez que faz com que a apropriação simultânea de Bergson e Wittgenstein pareça inconsistente.

The Mathematics of Continuous Multiplicities: The Role of Riemann in Deleuze's Reading of Bergson

A central claim of Deleuze's reading of Bergson is that Bergson's distinction between space as an extensive multiplicity and duration as an intensive multiplicity is inspired by the distinction between discrete and continuous manifolds found in Bernhard Riemann's 1854 thesis on the foundations of geometry. Yet there is no evidence from Bergson that Riemann influences his division, and the distinction between the discrete and continuous is hardly a Riemannian invention. Claiming Riemann's influence, however, allows Deleuze to argue that quantity, in the form of ‘virtual number’, still pertains to continuous multiplicities. This not only supports Deleuze's attempt to redeem Bergson's argument against Einstein in Duration and Simultaneity, but also allows Deleuze to position Bergson against Hegelian dialectics. The use of Riemann is thereby an important element of the incorporation of Bergson into Deleuze's larger early project of developing an anti-Hegelian philosophy of difference. This article first reviews the role of discrete and continuous multiplicities or manifolds in Riemann's Habilitationsschrift, and how Riemann uses them to establish the foundations of an intrinsic geometry. It then outlines how Deleuze reinterprets Riemann's thesis to make it a credible resource for Deleuze's Bergsonism. Finally, it explores the limits of this move, and how Deleuze's later move away from Bergson turns on the rejection of an assumption of Riemann's thesis, that of ‘flatness in smallest parts’, which Deleuze challenges with the idea, taken from Riemann's contemporary, Richard Dedekind, of the irrational cut.

Tracking the Triple Form of Difference: Deleuze's Bergsonism and the Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible

This paper will explore the notions of intensity, the virtual/actual and different/ciation in Gilles Deleuze's work. It will focus in particular on excavating the Bergsonian dimension of these terms in Deleuze's philosophy and their relations to one another. While much has been written on the role of Bergson in shaping Deleuze's virtual/actual philosophy, far less attention has been paid to the way in which Deleuze's thoughts on intensity and the movements of different/ciation are also developed out of his reading of Bergson. To address this I will explicate the ‘triple form of difference’ that Deleuze locates in Bergson, which includes renditions of intensity and the process of differentiation, after which I will map the movements from this early Bergsonian work to Deleuze's mature position on the matter, as it is found in the final chapter of Difference and Repetition.

Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art by Sebastian Zeidler

Reviewed by: Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art by Sebastian Zeidler Joyce Suechun Cheng Form as Revolt: Carl Einstein and the Ground of Modern Art. Sebastian Zeidler. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv + 306. $99.95 (cloth); $35.00 (paper). The German-Jewish poet, critic, and philosopher Carl Einstein (1885–1940) was a reluctant practitioner of the “paraphrase,” his name for the practice by which writers and academics reduce concrete, sensuous realities to abstract ideas. But not only did Einstein himself produce an impressive body of critical and theoretical texts on art, thus becoming an art paraphraseur à contrecœur, his own elliptical, hermetic language had subsequently subjected scholars to the same embarrassing predicament. If all serious students of Einstein have wrestled with the intractable yet necessary task of paraphrasing Einstein, Sebastian Zeidler has done so with exceptional vigor. Informed by Zeidler’s PhD dissertation and containing previously published articles, Form as Revolt is a theoretically oriented reading of Einstein’s philosophy of art through select texts, specifically Einstein’s seminal Negerplastik (on African sculpture) and his writings on cubism, Pablo Picasso’s surrealist period, and Paul Klee’s 1920s work. The reader should therefore not expect an intellectual biography or an historical-contextualist study of this major figure of the European avant-garde. Acknowledging the intertwinement between writing and activism in Einstein’s life in a brief biography at the outset, Zeidler nevertheless concludes that “Einstein’s exploits during [events like the Spanish Civil War] are . . . redundant for an account of Einstein as a writer or art critic” (54). Unlike most Einstein scholars to date, Zeidler has no interest in Einstein’s relationship to expressionist circles and Berlin Dada in his native Germany, or his participation in the dissident surrealist group in interwar Paris, which Zeidler deems “anecdotally entertaining but critically negligible” (158). Claiming that “the contexts through which Einstein kept moving never grounded his texts,” Zeidler insists instead on Einstein’s singularity as the “lost wanderer,” whose life and thought reflect “a modern ontological condition” that Zeidler terms “groundlessness” (9). In the first, most philological of the chapters, “The Lost Wanderer,” Zeidler reads Einstein’s early writings as exercises in the “style of nonessence (Unwesen).” This refers to Einstein’s skepticism in regard to language’s ability to capture the essence of things, which for Einstein “is both assumed and not assumed to be ‘given’” (40). Attributing Einstein’s “nonessentialism” to the influence of German Romantic thought, Zeidler shows the extent to which Hegel’s philosophy and Novalis’s Mathematical Fragments informed Einstein’s negative conception of language and his interest in form as an “equation” rather than mimetic representation. The second chapter, “Sculpture Ungrounded,” concerns Einstein’s 1915 treatise on West African sculpture, in which he polemicizes against post-baroque European sculpture’s over-reliance [End Page 891] on the pictorial. Epitomized by the neoclassical sculptor and theorist Adolf von Hildebrand’s advocacy for the sculptural relief, “pictorial” sculpture becomes for Einstein the foil for African sculpture’s unique capacity to convert material mass into “cubic form,” which Einstein deems “objective” in contrast to the “subjectivism” of European art. Zeidler does not as much take issue with this standard reading as he complicates it (though the interested reader can find in the footnotes his energetic reactions to previous scholarly discussions). He first enlists more potential targets for Einstein’s polemic: the physiological optics of Hermann von Helmholtz (an acquaintance of Hildebrand, but not of Einstein), and Georg Simmel’s texts on Auguste Rodin (to which Einstein alludes in passing). Zeidler argues that these two figures—representatives, respectively, of neo-Kantian epistemology (Helmholtz) and Bergsonian vitalism (Simmel)—coincide in their advocacy for “a temporalized sculptural experience” (82). To this Zeidler opposes Einstein’s concept of sculpture as “totality” and “simultaneity,” which while equally indebted to Bergson is for Zeidler more akin to “the Bergsonism of Gilles Deleuze” (86). This theoretical manoeuver allows Zeidler to develop a Deleuzian reading of African art: “It is . . . as an actualization of the virtual, in Deleuze’s reading of Bergson, that the totality of Einstein’s Chokwe [Angola] figure confronted the Western viewer in 1915” (86). Given...

On the stillness of movement: A reading of Bergson, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.

On the stillness of movement: A reading of Bergson, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.

The Dispossession of Character

The Dispossession of Character

Voice Without a Subject

In this article, I deterritorialize the subject by thinking with concepts in the new empiricisms. Thinking first with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs, and then with Deleuze and his reading of Bergson’s concept duration, I attempt a reimagining of voice that starts with an ontological unit no longer that of the individual human being. Given this rupture, I pose the following questions: What might it mean to think voice in its many forms as not linked to an “I” of the humanist subject? What does a rethinking of the “I” portend for thinking voice? Is there an “I” of the inquirer or narrator that can be burdened with voice in the new empiricisms? What kind of voice can be thought once voice no longer has to be present, emanating from a unique, essentialist subject, (“I”) conscious to itself? In other words, if there is no subject in the humanist sense, what form does research or thought take in the new?

Out of Character: Modernism, Vitalism, Psychic Life by Omri Moses (review)

Reviewed by: Out of Character: Modernism, Vitalism, Psychic Life by Omri Moses Claire Laville Out of Character: Modernism, Vitalism, Psychic Life. Omri Moses. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Pp. 296. $65.00 (cloth). High modernists were known to reject “the realism of character” (as Gertrude Stein described the novels of George Eliot), with its static social types and transparent personal motivations. Since the 1960s, many critics have extrapolated those representational choices into a wholesale rejection of consciousness or subjectivity. Out of Character sets out to “repsychologize” modernism while avoiding the error of depth psychology—in short, the idea that each of us possesses a truer self than the outward-facing one, or that we can explain our present behavior in reference to a concrete, traumatic event in the past. For Stein, Henry James, and T. S. Eliot, the vitalist philosophy of Henri Bergson and William James offered a way to describe character that was thick with the transitory stuff of life, a holism in which the meaning of the whole was always changing. For Moses, vitalist modernism offers a corrective to other critical movements, which he gathers into two loose groups: those that view the self as the product of external forces (including Frankfurt School critical theory, Foucauldian analysis, and behaviorism) and those that see it as a conservative edifice needing to be subverted or shattered (poststructuralism and queer theory). Out of Character is a strikingly optimistic book. It takes characters widely associated with mental paralysis—Stein’s Melanctha, Eliot’s Prufrock—and recasts them as agents with the power to transform their circumstances, within limits. Most of the action takes place in what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick called the “middle ranges of agency,” in which one is aware of some, but not all, of the forces bearing upon oneself and acts tentatively and locally.1 Like Sedgwick, Moses is amenable to a biological picture of life. He accepts that there is some evolutionary basis for our species-wide interest in fictional characters, yet his suggestions are more accommodating than the cognitive-literary mainstream would be. One prominent adaptationist view holds that we read fiction in order to better predict the outcomes of social situations; Moses offers instead that the value of literature is its difference from real life, its allowing us to try out the “reactions we might have toward others when our own instrumental calculations are not at issue” (58). This follows from Bergson’s principle of creative evolution, which stipulates that culture, rather than being an epiphenomenon of the survival instincts, actually contributes to the evolution of life. [End Page 257] The reading of Bergson is lucid and subtle throughout. Moses sketches out a genealogy of vitalism intertwined closely with classical pragmatism, beginning with the physiological investigation of memory and habit in 1880s Germany. (His insistence on distinguishing vitalism from pragmatism is not entirely convincing.2) From investigations scientific and aesthetic, Bergson and William James concluded that learned inattention, rather than diluting perception, makes perceptions meaningful. Moses finds in their writings a pluralistic alternative to some recent ethico-political studies of modernism. Where some critics have tried to determine the ethical valence of art’s seeming withdrawal from the social world (either it represents a retreat from war and empire, or the inadequacy of politics as such), Moses simply observes that modernists—and the psychologies of perception that inspired so many of them—were uniquely alert to the “variability in response that make[s] social and political freedom a value in the first place” (48). This is a liberal and a pragmatic aesthetic virtue as much as a vitalist one. Bergson linked habit with comedy at a time when the discourse surrounding habit was fatalistic and very often a conduit for racist and sexist ideology. In his early essay “Laughter,” Bergson argued that laughter interrupted the human tendency to automatism, including the capitulation to type. “Melanctha,” Stein’s novella depicting an African American community in Baltimore, has been widely read against the backdrop of social Darwinism, with Melanctha’s death from tuberculosis said to be a punishment for poor self-control. In contrast, Moses shows that the text enacts a comic Darwinism in which habits are value-neutral...

Gilles Deleuze on Sacher-Masoch and Sade: A Bergsonian Criticism of Freudian Psychoanalysis

In the long line of French Sade studies, Deleuze's essay Coldness and Cruelty marks out a special place. By discussing Masoch both in addition to and in contrast to Sade, Deleuze reveals the stakes of his book: he wants to unmask the concept of sadomasochism as a clinical nonentity. In their paper, the authors explain the arguments supporting this project and show their relation to Deleuze's reading of Bergson. They then argue that there is a second, similarly Bergsonian criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis operating in the background of Coldness and Cruelty. This more wide-ranging criticism takes Freud to task for conceiving perversion, like neurosis, in Oedipal terms. This conception, Deleuze holds, forgets that perversion and neurosis represent two different worlds that essentially have nothing to do with each other despite crossing in clinical experience.

Humor as an Optics: Bergson and the Ethics of Humor

Although the ethics of humor is a relatively new field, it already seems to have achieved a consensus about ethics in general. In this paper, I implicitly (1) question the view of ethics that stands behind many discussions in the ethics of humor; I do this by explicitly (2) focusing on what has been a chief preoccupation in the ethics of humor: the evaluation of humor. Does the immoral content of a joke make it more or less humorous? Specifically, I analyze whether a sexist joke is more humorous because of its sexism. Contra recent trends in the ethics of humor, I answer this question affirmatively. To this end, the paper presents a detailed and novel reading of Bergson's philosophy of humor, which I argue connects most easily and significantly to the alternate view of ethics I have in mind.

‘Perform-Box’: Towards an architecture-of-time

In this paper, we introduce and discuss the itinerary of a 2nd year architectural design course, led by ourselves at Beykent U's Dept. of Architecture. The terms of our discussion traces Deleuze's reworking of Bergson's theory of duration. We retain the critical, hermeneutic and creative moments of Deleuze's selective reading of Bergson while appropriating these moments as our own means of problematizing duration in the context of architecture through performance. In the first part of the article, we follow through the methodological implications of Bergson's three rules of intuition so as to be able to propose a critical outline of “the metric logic of architecture” as an architecture-of-space. Characterized as it is by a lack of precision, this logic fails to regard for the singularity of the body by adopting repertories of knowledge that are static, mediated, and too general. In the second part, we describe the three individual yet inter-connected stages of our design studio process, with references to several student projects in detail. Our main aim here is to counter-attack the logic of metrics with the basic premises of a “parametric logic,” an architecture-of-time, which is inherently performative in nature and is based on dynamic, immediate and singular repertories of knowledge. In the third and final part, we try to highlight those aspects of intuition that in turn may provide us with a model of teaching and learning that capitalizes a re-engagement of architecture with duration. Our guiding questions in elaborating each part are: (1) What does it mean for architecture to embody time instead of representing it? (2) How can intuition turn into a design method and an experiential model in architectural education? (3) What kind of a relation between instructor and student is evoked by elan vital when taken as a pedagogical principle?

슈퍼히어로 코믹의 반복과 다양체적 형식에 관한 연구

현재 다양한 플랫폼에서 슈퍼히어로 코믹을 바탕으로 한 미디어들이 쏟아져 나오고 있고 영화의 경우만 보면 다수의 슈퍼히어로 영화들이 역대 전 세계 흥행 순위 상위권에 오르는 등 높은 인기를 누리고 있다. 이러한 현상은 '슈퍼히어로의 역습'이라 표현할 수 있는 2012년 국내 극장가에서도 똑같이 재현되고 있다. 슈퍼히어로에 대한 높은 관심에도 불구하고 이들의 고향이나 다름없는 출판코믹은 아직 국내 팬들에게 생소하다. 본 논문은 출판 코믹에서 구현되는 슈퍼히어로의 다양성과 방대한 세계관에 주목하고 이러한 끊임없는 생성과 무한 반복이 슈퍼히어로의 정체성과 어떤 연관성이 있는지 존재론적 관점으로 연구한 것이다. 먼저, 2장에서 한명의 슈퍼히어로가 다수의 평행우주에 개별적으로 존재하는 슈퍼히어로 코믹의 다중 우주적 세계관을 구체적으로 설명하였다. 복수적인 한명의 슈퍼히어로와 복수의 시리즈는 내러티브의 통일성을 무너뜨리고 모순과 역설을 초래하지만 다양한 실험적 창작을 허락하기 때문에 슈퍼히어로 코믹을 생동감 있는 생성/창작의 공간으로 발전시키는데 공헌하였다. 3장에서 본격적으로 반복의 사유로 슈퍼히어로와 코믹 텍스트를 살펴본다. 슈퍼히어로의 반복은 경제적 실리의 잉여적 생산이기 이전에 창조적 역량의 반복임을 주장한다. 질 들뢰즈가 그의 초기 저서 <차이와 반복>(Diff<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>rence et R<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>p<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>tition)에서 현실을 왜곡하는 일반적인 동일성을 지적하고 플라톤의 재현의 체제를 전복하고자 그가 사유한 창조적인 반복을 슈퍼히어로의 반복의 중요한 논리적 근거로 활용한다. 들뢰즈가 창조적이고 역동하는 반복과 니체의 영원회귀 하는 초인이 다르지 않다는 주장에 근거하여 슈퍼히어로가 생기 있는 차이, 동일성에 종속되지 않은 시뮬라크르의 존재라고 주장한다. 즉 슈퍼히어로는 반복이 존재의 근거며 반복되어야 슈퍼히어로로 현실화가 가능하다고 주장한다. 또 반복의 출발, 근원은 들뢰즈가 베르그송에서 주로 차용한 다양제적 잠재성(the virtual)이라는 점에 근거하여 '일자一者'적 슈퍼히어로(예로, 슈퍼맨)이 '다자多者'인 내재적 잠재성을 형성하고 포괄적이고 심층적인 반복을 통해 이전의 모든 슈퍼맨의 통합된 기억, 과거, 지속(잠재성)에서 분화된 슈퍼맨으로 탄생(현실화)한다고 주장한다. 4장에서 수적 다양성과 내적 다양체를 논하고 모든 반복이 들뢰즈의 생성과 역량의 반복으로 귀결되지 않는다는 점을 밝히기 위해 한국만화의 대표적 만화 캐릭터인 이현세 작가의 오혜성과 슈퍼맨을 비교한다. American superhero comics are being produced in numerous different forms for multiple, and cross-platform media. In cinema, films based on superhero comics top the list of all time box office records. The same phenomenon of the 'Invasion of Superhero' is duplicated in Korean box office 2012, however, the korean fans are not familiar with the superheroes from the publication which provides the original source of characters and stories for other superhero related media products. Based on observing the multiple and vastness of world building characteristics of superhero comic, this paper attempts to associate the continuous creative nature and the infinite repetition of superheroes and comic texts with the identity of superhero on ontological level. First, chapter 2 examines how one superhero exists in multiple and different worlds individually by utilizing the concept of 'multi-universe' or 'multiverse' in comic texts. Initially, duplicating a superhero on multiple settings and series destroyed continuity and allowed contradiction and paradox confused narrative as a whole, but it also gave chances for comics to be more vibrant and experimental with their stories and characters. Chapter 3 analyzes the superhero comic texts in the light of repetition, concept developed by french philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and make the argument that the superheroes and texts are not repeated to generate surplus of source for economic utilitarian purposes, but it is, first and foremost, a repetition of creativeness and capability. Many concepts introduced by Deleuze in his early masterpiece, <Diff<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>rence et R<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>p<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>tition> are taken to support this argument. Mainly, his critical views on generality of the identity and his effort to replace the Plato's system of representation with vibrant creative, and renewal energy of r<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>p<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>tition. According to Deleuze, repetition is similar concept, if not identical, to what Nietzsche called the 'eternal return' which allows the return of the Overhuman or the Superhuman, and he extends his idea that the returning Overhuman is the singular simulacre which opposes the generalization of identity, in the likes of Plato's Idea. Thus, the superhero's identity is ever changing, ever returning, and ever renewing Overhuman. The superhero must be repeated to fully actualize his/her existence. Also, based on Deleuze's reading of Bergson's texts on the Virtual, the superhero, for example Superman, is actualization of his/her multiplisit<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>, the internally multiple, and differentiated variations from itself. These every Supermans' multiplisit<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX> shares common memory, past, and duration, thus the Virtual of Superman. Superman becomes himself only by actualizing the movement and differentiation from these multiplisit<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX> in his virtual on the surface of reality. On chapter 4, a popular Korean comic book character Oh, Hae-Sung's r<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>p<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>tition and multiplist<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX> are analyzed, and makes comparison to that of Superman to distinguish the repetition from r<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>p<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX>tition, and multiplicit<TEX>$\acute{e}$</TEX> from diversity.

One of Deleuze's Bergsonisms

In this article I attempt to reveal some continuities between the anti-psychoanalytic stance adopted by Gilles Deleuze in his later work and Henri Bergson's early philosophy. On account of these continuities I hope to provide a glimpse into what I believe is a century-old tangent of philosophical resistance to the methods and theories of Freudian psychoanalysis. In order to achieve this, I start with a brief meditation on the challenges and benefits of cross-generational inheritance and collaboration in philosophy. The purpose of this is twofold – to explore some general conditions for such collaboration and to tease out some of the implications of these conditions for the substantive argument my specific reading of Bergson via Deleuze occasions. I then expound on Bergson's theory of duration and some of the uses to which Deleuze puts it in the latter part of his career. In this I outline several fecund similarities between Bergson's critique of associationism and Deleuze's attack on Freud. Finally, I attempt a partial evaluation of Freudian psychoanalysis from the joint, albeit naturally disjointed, perspective of my primary sources.

“A Different Starting Point, a Different Metaphysics”: Reading Bergson and Barad Diffractively

This article provides an affirmative feminist reading of the philosophy of Henri Bergson by reading it through the work of Karen Barad. Adopting such a diffractive reading strategy enables feminist philosophy to move beyond discarding Bergson for his apparent phallocentrism. Feminist philosophy finds itself double bound when it critiques a philosophy for being phallocentric, because the setup of a master narrative comes into being with the critique. By negating a gender-blind or sexist philosophy, feminist philosophy only reaffirms its parameters, and setting up a master narrative costs feminist philosophy its feminism. I thus propose and practice a different methodological starting point, one that capitalizes on “diffraction.” This article experiments with the affirmative phase in feminist philosophy prophesied by Elizabeth Grosz, among others. Working along the lines of the diffractive method, the article at the same time proposes a new reading of Bergson (as well as of Barad), a new, different metaphysics indeed, which can be specified as onto-epistemological or “new materialist.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Criticism of Bergson's Theory of Time Seen Through The Work of Gilles Deleuze

In this article I examine the relation between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze by looking at the way they refer to the time theory of Henri Bergson. It appears that, although Merleau-Ponty copies some fundamental Bergsonian insights on the nature of time, he presents himself as a critical reader of the latter. I will show that Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of Bergson differs fundamentally from the one by Deleuze, but that Merleau-Ponty's 'corrections' to Bergson fit Deleuze's reading of Bergson very well. This indicates a similarity with respect to what is at stake in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. The critical reference that Deleuze makes to Merleau-Ponty's conception of cinema and thus of movement is hence not justified, but the result of a selective and prototypical reading of the early Merleau-Ponty.

Difference and Creativity

The concept of virtual holds central position in philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Brian Massumi states that it probably most pivotal . . . concept in Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical vocabulary (Massumi, 34). Daniel W. Smith writes, entire philosophy is concerned with description of this virtual domain (Smith, 172). The concept of virtual can be found in several of Deleuze's writings on history of philosophy. There is oscillation between virtual and actual that he sees in Leibniz (DR, 212-13 and LB, 104-05), and related concept ofpotentia that he finds in work of Spinoza (SPP, 97-104; Massumi 156n53).1 But Deleuze adopts this contrast between virtual and possible most directly from work of Henri Bergson.2 This essay will analyze Deleuze's reading of virtual/actual distinction in Bergson's work and how aspects of this distinction can be found in Deleuze's own concept of a life. The importance of virtual has been noted by number of commentators. Alain Badiou concentrates on ontological character of virtual in his The Clamor of Being but does not discuss Bergsonian inspiration for this concept (Badiou, 43-53). In his Vocabulaire de Deleuze, Francois Zourabichvili discusses transcendental dimension of virtual without explaining process of actualization or its origin in Bergson's work (Zourabichvili, 89-91). Constantin V. Boundas more thoroughly addresses virtuality-possibility distinction and how these concepts relate to Deleuze's transcendental empiricism in his essay on Deleuze and Bergson, but he does not explicitly show how process of actualization of memory and elan vital in Deleuze's reading of Bergson is parallel, in certain fashion, with actualization in Deleuze's own concept of a life and constitution of subjectivity as I will do here. There will therefore be two main parts to this essay. The first will be an analysis of Deleuze's reading of virtuality and actualization as it is described in Bergsonism. This part will include two sections that correspond to two models of virtuality in Bergson's work: Bergson's theory of memory that is presented in Matter and Memory and elan vital that Bergson describes in Creative Evolution. We will see that actualization has two aspects that establish it as different from realization of possibilities. These two aspects are differentiation and creativity. The second part of essay will show how these two aspects can be seen in Deleuze's conception of a life as it is described primarily in Immanence: Life. This demonstrates influence of Deleuze's reading of Bergson on his own philosophy. But before we can examine how Deleuze interprets Bergson's theories of memory and elan vital and how aspects of these interpretations later get used by Deleuze, we need to clarify what virtual and actual are and how this distinction is different than possible and real. Deleuze is fond of citing Proust's formula when describing virtual. It states that virtual is without being actual, ideal without being abstract (B, 96 and DR, 208).3 The idea that Deleuze is trying to get across with this formula is that virtual is not opposed to real but to actual. The possible, on other hand, is opposed to real. Thus possible has no reality. The virtual, on other hand, is not actual but has reality. Therefore, if our terminology is to be consistent, we must say that virtualities are actualized and possibilities are realized (B, 96). Thus far, virtuality-actuality distinction seems to be merely matter of word choice. But that is not case because actualization and realization are two very different processes. Deleuze states that process of realization is subject to two rules: rule of resemblance and rule of limitation. The rule of resemblance states, the real is supposed to be image of possible that it realizes (B, 97). …

A Deleuzian Reading of Bergson

A Deleuzian Reading of Bergson

Forget the virtual: Bergson, actualism, and the refraction of reality

In this essay I critique a particular reading of Bergson that places an excessive weight on the concept of the ‘virtual’. Driven by the popularity of Deleuze’s use of the virtual, this image of Bergson (seen especially through his text of 1896, Matter and Memory, where the idea is introduced) generates an imbalance that fails to recognise the importance of concepts of actuality, like space or psychology, in his other works. In fact, I argue that the virtual is not the key concept for Bergsonism and that there is a good deal of evidence in Bergson’s other writings, especially those connected with his actualist notion of ‘refraction’, to think of him as a perspectivist philosopher. Moreover, it will be seen that Virtualism resides within an economy of reflection that is subsumed within the broader paradigm of Actualist refraction. Taking these optical metaphors seriously, the virtual becomes a perspectival image seen from an actual position, or rather, an interacting set of actual positions. This interaction is termed ‘virtualization’, denoting the substitution of a substantive conception with a processual one. In the first two parts of the essay, I direct my remarks more towards Deleuzian readings of the actual rather than Deleuze himself (Deleuze is so open about the biases he brings to his reading of Bergson as to be beyond criticism). In the second two sections, I pursue a philosophical argument for the probity of a non-Virtualist position as such within philosophy, based upon the concept of refraction. This is done not only because it is important that we remain open to other readings of Bergson that are not so heavily mediated in one direction, but also in view of the power of refraction as a new concept for reconciling actual modes such as molar identity, the present, and extension, with their virtual opposites.

Open Society and Bolos: A Utopian Reading of Bergson's 'Final Remarks'

The last chapter of Henri Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion can still today be read as a powerful incentive to reflect upon alternative models of social organization. This article compares Bergson's 'Final Remarks' and P. M.'s Bolo'bolo in order to demonstrate how Bergson's foreseeing economic analysis and plea for peace can concur with more recent radical political criticism and potentially lay the ground for concrete projects. Bolo'bolo can in many ways be interpreted as a response to Bergson's call for cultural change 50 years before. To advocate the implementation of a worldwide network of small communities or 'bolos' is to follow the inspiration of the 'open society' agenda, thus contributing to keeping the utopian spirit alive.