Deleuze: Ethics and Politics

The 4th Biennial Philosophy and Literature Conference at Purdue University, April 9-10, 2010

Keynote speakers: Daniel W. Smith (Purdue University), Eugene Holland (Ohio State University), and Arkady Plotnitsky (Purdue University)

The philosopher Michel Serres once described Gilles Deleuze as “an excellent example of the dynamic movement of free and inventive thinking.” Without a doubt, Deleuze was one of the most singular and prolific philosophers of the 20th century. It is no surprise then, that the impact of Deleuze’s thought continues to reverberate throughout a host of diverse disciplines. With recognition of Deleuze’s influence in these various fields, and in the spirit of Serres’ assessment, this conference seeks to motivate an exploration of Deleuze’s inventive thinking in the particular areas of politics and ethics by bringing together faculty and graduate students interested in engaging, developing, or critically examining these areas of Deleuze's work.

This two-day conference will consist of four panels, each with three to four accepted graduate students presenting, three keynote addresses, and a wine and cheese reception.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• immanent vs. transcendent criteria in ethics.
• political theory, law and jurisprudence.
• the role of the State in relation to capitalism.
• the possibility of social forms of organization radically exterior to the State forms.
• the positive or productive function of desire as a creative force directly invested in the social field.
• the problem of micro-fascism with respect to individual and collective processes of subjectivation.
• forms of resistance enabled by minor literature and other processes of becoming-minor.
• conceptions of cartography as a critical and transformative social analytic of power relations.
  

EMAIL SUBMISSIONS TO: philconf@purdue.edu

SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS JANUARY 15, 2010.

Papers and abstracts should be sent as Word documents. Personal information is to be sent in the body of the email and should not appear on the paper itself.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Dr. Daniel W. Smith is known for national and international projects including translations of Deleuze and Klossowski and several works on Deleuze leading up to the forthcoming publication of his book on Deleuze’s philosophical system. Dr. Eugene Holland specializes in social theory and modern French literature, history, and culture. He has published widely including a 1999 volume on Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus and a forthcoming book on Nomad Citizenship. Dr. Arkady Plotnitsky has contributed numerous publications on Deleuze and on the topics of science, literature, and philosophy. He is currently working on a book entitled Space-Time-Matter-Thought: Non-Euclideanism from Riemann and Deleuze, and Beyond.

"Deleuze: Ethics and Politics" is being made possible through the generous financial support of the Dean's Office of the College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University.

Schizoanalysis and Visual Culture

Schizoanalysis and Visual Culture

Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory

Venue: Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

Dates: June 1st - June 2nd 2010

What is schizoanalysis and how might it be applied to the analysis of contemporary visual culture?

This question is both daunting in its complexity and exciting in terms of the possibility for a whole new way of thinking about visual culture it offers. Answering it seems to require that we experiment with Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas and concepts to produce our own new syntheses adequate to the demands of the present creative, historical and theoretical conjuncture we find ourselves in today. That is the challenge this symposium will take up by bringing together some of the most creative and exacting scholars working in the twin fields of Deleuze studies and film studies today.

Abstracts should be sent to the conference convenor Ian Buchanan buchanani@cardiff.ac.uk by January 31, 2010.

Registration and program details will be added to this site in due course.

Keynote Speakers

Dr Felicity Colman (Manchester Metropolitan)

Dr Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University)

Dr Richard Rushton (University of Lancaster)

Professor Tom Conley (Harvard University)

Professor David Rodowick (Harvard University)

Professor Mirjam Schaub (The Free University of Berlin)

Professor Paola Marrati (Johns Hopkins University)

Professor Patricia Pisters (University of Amsterdam)

Deleuze Studies Special Issue

Deleuze and The Symptom

This is a call for papers for a special issue of the journal

Deleuze Studies

entitled 'Deleuze and the Symptom'.
Guest edited by Aidan Tynan.

Some of the most influential theoretical contributions of the last several decades have sought to formulate the relationship between the body and its symbolic environments through the concept of the symptom. Perhaps the most influential of these was Lacan's conception of speech
and desire, in which the symptom, as signifier, discloses a set of meanings which disturb conscious discourse, while Althusser’s symptomatic reading of Marx offered a means to bypass vulgar economist and historicist versions of Marxist theory.

More recently, the symptom has figured prominently in Žižek’s unique
brand of ideology critique, while Althusserian symptomatic reading has been employed in Jameson’s literary criticism to overcome the antinomies of structure and history. This issue of Deleuze Studies is concerned with Deleuze’s position in relation to these debates. Much of Deleuze’s work, particularly the essays collected in his final book Critique et Clinique, was influenced by Nietzsche’s conviction that philosophy should proceed as a diagnosis of culture. This is complicated by Deleuze and Guattari’s apparent repudiation of psychoanalysis and exaltation of the schizophrenic as the supreme cultural icon of our time.

Some of the questions which this issue seeks to address are: what is the relation of Deleuze’s highly formalist conception of critique as symptomatology to the practice of schizoanalysis, and how does this position Deleuze’s work with respect to the debates mentioned above? Is there a specifically Deleuzian conception of the symptom? What roles do the pathological and pathos play in Deleuze’s thought and politics? What is the significance of Deleuze’s insistence on the criterion of “great health”, and the fact that schizoanalysis is presented as therapeutic?

Please submit papers of between 5,000 – 10,000 words to
atynan@gmail.com by no later than December 20th, 2009.

The 3rd International Deleuze Studies Conference

Connect, Continue, Create

Deleuze and Nomadic Methodologies

Amsterdam 12-14 July 2010

ASCA / CFH

Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis with the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University



“Philosophy needs a nonphilosophy that comprehends it; it needs a nonphilosophical comprehension just as art needs nonart and science needs nonscience”, Deleuze and Guattari argue in What is Philosophy? The third annual International Deleuze Studies Conference will address the relevance of nomadic thought for contemporary scientific, critical and artistic practices. More specifically, it will explore the fast-growing new inter-connections among the three domains of art, science and philosophy, by mapping out and exploring the complex ways in which transdisciplinary encounters can be engendered. Combining critique with creation, the conference will focus on issues of methodology by positioning Deleuze’s philosophical work as the missing link among different domains of scientific enquiry, philosophical and artistic practice today. Central questions are: what are the different ways of interference among these different areas? What kind of methodological implications do their dynamic encounters entail? What are the limits of transdisciplinary connections, relations and fields? What kind of research is art practice? In a world that is increasingly technologically linked and globally mediated, how can scientific disciplines connect in distinctive and productive ways both among themselves and with practices located in the world of art and thought? The conference rests on the assumption that rhizomatic growth and inter-relations are unpredictable but this does not mean that they proceed randomly. Connections may be broken but will always continue to grow in other directions and create new encounters, new thoughts and new affects. The notion of creation itself is thus an important one that needs to be reconsidered and reevaluated.

Central questions addressed at the conference are: in what ways do disciplines meet and interfere with one another? What kind of methodological and political implications do their dynamic encounters entail? What are the limits of transdisciplinary connections, relations and fields?

Possible topics for papers may include:

* Methodological interfaces between science and the Humanities
* Art as Philosophical Practice
* Urban planning and architecture
* Nomadic politics and Social Sustainability
* Neuroscience and Culture
* Aesthetics of Life Sciences
* The Policy-making implications of eco-philosophy and Triple Ecologies


Length of presentations: max. 20 minutes. We welcome panel proposals.

Please send your abstract (max. 200 words) and a short bio to callforpapers@deleuze-amsterdam.nl before the 1st of March, 2010.

Confirmation of acceptance will be emailed before April 15th, 2010. Selections will take place on the basis of the number of panel presentations.

For conference registration and further information, please refer to our website: www.deleuze-amsterdam.nl

For more information please contact Maryn Wilkinson at
conference@deleuze-amsterdam.nl.

Please see also the conference website at www.deleuze-amsterdam.nl

Parallel to the conference several art events and film screenings will take place in Amsterdam and Utrecht. Conference Organizers: Prof. Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam; Prof. Rosi Braidotti, University of Utrecht.

Mille Gilles: Deleuze Camp 4

Preceding the conference students can participate in the Deleuze camp Mille Gilles which will take place from 5-9 July 2010 in Amsterdam. In intensive sessions participants will read texts by Deleuze and Deleuze scholars with the help of experienced scholars from different disciplinary fields. The Deleuze camp also includes a student forum in which participants can launch their own ideas and questions. Places are limited.

Participating scholars include:

Ian Buchanan
Joshua Delpech-Ramey
Gregory Flaxman
Eleanor Kaufman
Gregg Lambert
Elena del Rio
James Williams

Registration will open at the beginning of October 2009. Please address your application to Amir Vodka at summerschool@deleuze-amsterdam.nl

The Second International Deleuze Studies Conference

The Second International Deleuze Studies Conference

CONNECTdeleuze: TRANSDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES

The Department for American Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany

Aug 10-12 2009

The conference aims at building transdisciplinary assemblages that

involve Deleuze in a wider range of thought, i.e. at constructing, from different 'modules of thought,' innovative conceptual arrangements that integrate Deleuzian philosophy into the larger field of contemporary knowledge production and practices of living.

Speakers include:

Brent Adkins, Jeffrey Bell, Réda Bensmaia, Hanjo Berressem, Charlie Blake, Arno Böhler, Ronald Bogue, Mark Bonta, Rosi Braidotti, Ian Buchanan, Didier Debaise, Norbert Finzsch, Colin Gardner, Erika Gaudlitz, Johnny Golding, Paul Harris, Peter Hertz, Jean Hillier, David Holdsworth, Eugene Holland, Gillian Howie, Jan Jagodzinski, Shoshone Johnson, Christian Kerslake, Gregg Lambert, Patricia MacCormack, Erin Manning, David Martin-Jones, Brian Massumi, Philippe Mengue, Luciana Parisi, Patricia Pisters, Arkady Plotnitsky, Bryan Reynolds, Martin E. Rosenberg, Horst Ruthrof, Jac Saorsa, Mirjam Schaub, Henning Schmidgen, Inna Semetsky, Daniel W. Smith, Andreas Speer, Charles Stivale, Kenneth Surin, Laurent de Sutter, Janell Watson, Edward Willatt, Doro Wiese, James Williams

If you are interested in presenting at this conference, submit panel proposals and/or individual abstracts [250 words] to

CONNECTdeleuze@web.de

DEADLINE: Apr 30, 2009 (please include your affiliation and short bio)


Further details can be found at

http://www.pressoffice.uni-koeln.de/

Deleuze and Sex

"Making love is not just becoming as one,

or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand."

(Anti-Oedipus)

Deleuze and Sex

A new proposed volume in the Deleuze Connection series for Edinburgh University Press (Series Editor Ian Buchanan). Edited by Frida Beckman.

For Gilles Deleuze, sexuality has a central role in the production of thought, bodies, and becomings. True thought, he argues in Logic of Sense, is possible only when it is liberated from the notion of castration as transcendent law. Castration needs to be thought of, instead, as a crack, a fracture that does not produce a lack but a surface of thought, “projecting the entire corporeal surface of sexuality over the metaphysical surface of thought.” Sexuality, then, is linked closely to the possibility of immanence and thinking; the event of thought. If the transcendent law of castration results in a blockage of thought, it also results in the mastering and moulding of the sexual body into the molar notion of two sexes rather than the (pregenital) Harlequins cloak to which Deleuze compares it. The sexual surfaces of the libido are restricted, blocked, and reduced and thereby their flows are repressed “in order to contain them in the narrow cells of the type ‘couple,’ ‘family,’ ‘person,’ ‘objects.’” However, the sexual body is seen to retain a revolutionary potential and sexuality is seen as a source of becoming; there is immense power in the thousand sexes of desiring-machines, in sexuality beyond the “all too human” idea of castration as absence, and in the multiplicity of surfaces that are opened up in its place.


This collection seeks to address the notion of sexuality, not so much as instinct but as creation, not so much as a transcendent mode of organization but as a revolutionary machine. It wants to know the potential of sexuality when liberated from genitality as well as antrophomorphic presuppositions. It is therefore interested in exploring areas such as for example sexuality and the machinic, sexuality and surfaces, and sexuality and animality. It asks about the ontology of sex and how we can begin to know of it when it is no longer captive to molar representations. Investigating the strengths and potentials but also the weaknesses and dangers that sexuality open for thinking, bodies, and becomings, it pursues the ethic, aesthetic, political, and philosophical dimensions of Deleuze’s work on sexuality.


Importantly, contributors should note that this edited collection follows on edited books in the same series focusing on Deleuze and Feminist Theory, Deleuze and Queer Theory, and Deleuze and the Body (forthcoming). While aspects of gender, queer, and the body will be likely, as well as welcome in this new collection, it is crucial that articles focus specifically on the possibilities of sexual practice in the revisiting of such issues.


Abstracts should be submitted electronically to the editor no later than May 1st 2009.

frida.beckman@engelska.uu.se

The proposed publication date is set for autumn of 2010.

CFP: Deleuze and Activism

Deleuze and Activism

Cardiff University, Wales, UK

12-13 November, 2009

When Deleuze and Guattari wrote Anti-Oedipus they hoped it would be a resource to arms for dissidents and political activists. Rather than set out a program of change, they tried to isolate the political, cultural and economic factors that inhibit change. In so doing they created a work that was instantly recognised as a philosophical watershed. It changed the landscape of political theory in a single sweep. Subsequent works developed this analysis further, creating a formidable armoury of critical tools with which to face a world increasingly indifferent to philosophy. This conference seeks to examine the Deleuzian legacy from the point of view of radical politics. It seeks to analyse both what he and Guattari wrote on the subject and more particularly to see what their writings enable us to say now.

Keynote speakers

Paul Patton
Jeremy Gilbert
Nathan Widder
Ian Buchanan

Convened by Dr Marcelo Svirsky, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University

For more information, please contact:

svirskym@cardiff.ac.uk