Affect and attention after Deleuze and Whitehead : ecological attunement / Russell J. Duvernoy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Duvernoy, Russell J., author.

Series:

New perspectives in ontology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995.

Deleuze, Gilles.

Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861-1947.

Whitehead, Alfred North.

Metaphysics.

Ecology--Philosophy.

Ecology.

Physical Description:

x, 228 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2021]

Summary:

Argues for value of responsible speculative thinking in the context of crisis. Investigates intersections between Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. Situates the development of process ontologies in the lineage of radical empiricism and compares this to other contemporary speculative ontologies. Compares Whiteheadean feeling to Deleuze and Guattari's Spinozist-inspired deployment of affect. Identifies three points of potential divergence between Deleuze and Whitehead: the status of temporal discontinuity or continuity, the relation between Deleuze's "virtual" and Whitehead's "eternal objects", and the question of lived value, thematized through a discussion of what Deleuze calls the "beautiful soul". Russell Duvernoy develops 'resonances' between the metaphysics of Whitehead and Deleuze with regard to effects on attention and affect. The implications of these lead to an altered existential orientation, described by Duvernoy as ecological attunement. This original concept suggests that attention is ontologically creative, not just passively receptive, and feeling and affect are ontologically prior to the consolidation of lived subjectivity. The combined effects of these speculative claims cut deeply against the grain of prevailing habits with regard to subjectivity. Though these results are resolutely speculative, they unfold amidst intensifying ecological crisis and accompanying social, political and existential turbulence. What does it mean to pursue speculative thinking in this context? How do metaphysical concepts inform our lives and how might different concepts lead to different ways of life? Drawing on recent work by Massumi, Stengers, Debaise and Williams, this study explores their work in relation to other speculative trends in recent philosophy, including new materialisms, posthumanisms, speculative realism and object-oriented-ontology.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Attention, feeling and psychic ecology

A speculative concept: ecological attunement

Statement of purpose

pt. I Process Metaphysics and Ecological Attunement

1. Motivating Metaphysics: From Radical Empiricism to Process

Risking the speculative: on problems and beginnings

Attending to the bifurcation of nature

Pure experience as series and events

Realism and asubjective experience

2. Individuation and Attunement: Identities in Process

Constructing a problem: individuality at the intersection of the abstract and existential

Three theses on individuation in process thinking

3. Feeling as Creation: Affect and Tertiary Qualities

Perspectival realism and primary-secondary-tertiary qualities

Subjective aim and intensity

Attention, attunement and becoming-imperceptible?

4. Attention, Openness and Ecological Attunement

Two forms of passage and subjective attention

Subject as society: openness and stability

`Lines of flight' and paradoxes of normativity

pt. II Applied Metaphysics and Existential Implications

5. Attention, Equivalence and Existential Territories

Existential territories and psychic ecologies

The infiltration of equivalence: from exchange to axiology

Attention as ontological and counter habits

6. The Risks of Affect

The double bind of ecological attunement

Attunement and affect: vitality before world

Tertiary qualities and Self/Other

Janus-faced time: selection and orientation in ecological attunement

Conclusion: Fabulation and Epoch(s) to Come

Implications for ecological attunement

Fabulation and imagination as affirmative resistance.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-221) and index.

ISBN:

1474466915

9781474466912

OCLC:

1183424175