Craig Lundy | London Metropolitan University (original) (raw)

Books by Craig Lundy

Deleuze's Bergsonism, 2018

Henri Bergson is widely accepted as one of the most significant thinkers for Gilles Deleuze's wor... more Henri Bergson is widely accepted as one of the most significant thinkers for Gilles Deleuze's work. It is also frequently noted that Deleuze is largely responsible for having revived and contoured the prevailing interest in Bergson's work. Craig Lundy gives readers of Deleuze and Bergson an opportunity to discover and fully connect with an encounter that continues to exert enormous influence over the course of contemporary thought.

Edinburgh University Press, 2012

How are we to understand the process of transformation, the creation of the new, and its relation... more How are we to understand the process of transformation, the creation of the new, and its relation to what has come before? In History and Becoming, Craig Lundy puts forward a series of fresh and provocative responses to this enduring problematic. Through an analysis of Gilles Deleuze's major solo works and his collaborations with Félix Guattari, he demonstrates how history and becoming work together in driving novelty, transmutation and experimentation. What emerges from this exploration is a new way of thinking about history and the vital role it plays in bringing forth the future.

ENDORSEMENT:
What is the relation between history and becoming? How is the creativity of becoming entangled with the history it either modifies or transforms? Lundy responds to such questions in this rich and lucid book. A must read for anyone who appreciates Deleuze and/or addresses the enigma of creativity.
-- William E. Connolly, Krieger-Esienhower Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Edited Books by Craig Lundy

The Sociological Review, Volume 70 Issue 2, March, 2022

What might it take to learn to think and live after progress? The notion of ‘progress’ is arguabl... more What might it take to learn to think and live after progress? The notion of ‘progress’ is arguably the defining idea of modernity: a civilisational imagery of a boundless, linear and upwards trajectory towards a future that, guided by reason and technology, will be ‘better’ than the present. It was this notion that placed techno-science at the heart of the modern political culture, and it was the global unevenness of ‘progress’ that imagined European imperialism as a civilising mission inflicted upon ‘backward’ others for their own sake. Whilst during the postcolonial era the modern idea of progress and its deleterious consequences on a global scale have deservingly been the object of fierce criticism, ‘progress’, its promises and its discontents still command global political imaginations, values and policies to this day. In the wake of its devastating social, political and ecological effects, this article argues that the imperative of progress is now one we cannot live with but do not know how to live without. Thinking of progress not as one modern value among others but as the very mode of evaluation from which modern values are derived, this article provides an introductory exploration of the question of what thinking and living after progress might mean. It also provides an overview of the many contributions that compose this monograph, as divergent experiments in the radical revaluation of our values.

Edinburgh University Press, May 2015

This collection situates Deleuze’s work and several of his most important concepts in the context... more This collection situates Deleuze’s work and several of his most important concepts in the context of his post-Kantian predecessors, further illuminating both the breadth of his philosophical heritage and the manner in which he moves beyond it. Through a series of studies by leading scholars in the field, At the Edges of Thought sheds new light on key philosophical encounters with thinkers such as Maimon, Kleist, Hölderlin, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Feuerbach in Deleuze’s texts. Readers are invited to join with Deleuze as he traverses and transforms post- Kantian philosophy, taking it towards the very edges of thought.

Theory and Event, Vol.16, No.3, 2013, 2013

In May of 2012, a group of 90 scholars from around the world gathered at the Kaifeng Internationa... more In May of 2012, a group of 90 scholars from around the world gathered at the Kaifeng International Deleuze Conference held at Henan University in the ancient capital of Kaifeng City in Henan province. This two-day conference was jointly sponsored by Henan University and The University of New South Wales, and organised by Professor Jihai Gao, Professor Paul Patton and a team of academic and administrative staff and students from Henan led by Dr Jing Yin. The first of its kind to be held in China, this conference marked a new phase in the translation of Deleuzian thought and concepts into the diverse languages and cultures of East Asia. Speakers from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan presented alongside those from Europe, North America and Australia. The following papers are a small selection from the many productive encounters that occurred at this event. Presented by speakers from a variety of disciplines, they address a range of issues in Deleuzian political theory and its application to China.

Papers by Craig Lundy

International Journal of Human Resource Development: Practice, Policy and Research, 2023

This paper takes a person-in-context approach to explore how the neoliberal university, embroiled... more This paper takes a person-in-context approach to explore how the neoliberal university, embroiled in discourses of 'progress', influences academics' narrativization and navigation of career. Whilst aware of the role 'progress' plays in framing a 'traditional career', academics find themselves having to navigate the contours of the university-where matrices shout to the tide of 'progress' and where what gets measured supposedly gets done. Such matrices, providing a violent quantification of reality (Gee, 2020), reduce pedagogy to lustful percentages of satisfaction, research to star status-mirroring the aspirations of a McDonald's 'Diningroom Server'-and community engagement to a hurtful simile of impact. This research engages in dialogical-biography to provide insight into career turning points and meaning-making, with attention to broader contextual and conceptual dimensions. The paper explores tensions between 'social justice' and 'progress' with the aim of furthering debate within career-studies on the paradoxical relations of 'career' and 'progress' in academia today and considering the implications for human resource development.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible, 2022

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) contributed major philosophical works on time, consciousness, evolution... more Henri Bergson (1859-1941) contributed major philosophical works on time, consciousness, evolution, and morality. His thinking remains central to debates on fundamental issues within philosophy and social science, particular around "process ontology." Bergson's work was of enormous influence to early-twentiethcentury social science, and has seen a resurgence in the twenty-first century. This is in part due to the reception of Gilles Deleuze's work, which engaged extensively with Bergson. In this entry, we focus on Bergson's treatment of the relationship between "the possible" and "the real." Bergson inverts the Platonic organization of these terms, where the real is constituted by the selection of ideal forms of possible. Bergson argues that this makes it impossible to understand how "unforseeable novelty" might emerge in the world. The possible is instead a "mirage" retrospectively posited as prior to the real. This treatment is part of a broader project of overcoming metaphysical mistakes which consist in seeing one philosophical term as adding fullness and positivity to another. In its place, Bersgson offers an account of life as dynamic, autopoietic emergence. In the final part of the entry we describe how an engagement with Bergson can afford social science approaches to memory, imagination, and lived experience as emergent patternings of life responding to life.

The Sociological Review, 2022

For many decades, scholars working within the broad paradigm of complexity studies/theory have ex... more For many decades, scholars working within the broad paradigm of complexity studies/theory have explored the nonlinear dynamics that contour physical and social systems. In doing so, radical theories that contest both Newtonian and neo-Darwinian understandings of reality have been posited, augmenting how we think about processes of change. But throughout these developments, the modern idea of progress has arguably remained insufficiently contested. This article seeks to show how the framework of complexity can offer conceptual resources for rethinking progress. Key characteristics of complexity are articulated and critically examined with the aim of pinpointing how they might contribute to a conception of progress that is worthy of the name yet divergent from its dominant ‘modern’ form.

The Sociological Review, 2022

What might it take to learn to think and live after progress? The notion of ‘progress’ is arguabl... more What might it take to learn to think and live after progress? The notion of ‘progress’ is arguably the defining idea of modernity: a civilisational imagery of a boundless, linear and upwards trajectory towards a future that, guided by reason and technology, will be ‘better’ than the present. It was this notion that placed techno-science at the heart of the modern political culture, and it was the global unevenness of ‘progress’ that imagined European imperialism as a civilising mission inflicted upon ‘backward’ others for their own sake. Whilst during the postcolonial era the modern idea of progress and its deleterious consequences on a global scale have deservingly been the object of fierce criticism, ‘progress’, its promises and its discontents still command global political imaginations, values and policies to this day. In the wake of its devastating social, political and ecological effects, this article argues that the imperative of progress is now one we cannot live with but do not know how to live without. Thinking of progress not as one modern value among others but as the very mode of evaluation from which modern values are derived, this article provides an introductory exploration of the question of what thinking and living after
progress might mean. It also provides an overview of the many contributions that compose this monograph, as divergent experiments in the radical revaluation of our values.

Futures of Work (Issue 19), 2021

Theory, Culture and Society, 2021

In their final book, Deleuze and Guattari state that the practice of philosophy ‘calls for a futu... more In their final book, Deleuze and Guattari state that the practice of philosophy ‘calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist’. This call is deeply problematic: aside from its aristocratic overtones, it is difficult to ascertain what it might sound like, how to give it voice, and what might come of it. But it is also problematic in form. In this paper I will explain how. After investigating its genesis in Deleuze’s engagements with Nietzsche and Bergson, I will outline the geography of the call as it appears in the mature work of Deleuze and Guattari. Aided by this analysis, the paper will conclude by making some tentative remarks on what is to be done with the call for a new earth and people – or, more accurately, what might be done with it, for the benefit of what is to come.

Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 2019

This article examines the intersection of service-learning with complex systems theory. It is bas... more This article examines the intersection of service-learning with complex systems theory. It is based on a research project we undertook to explore whether complex systems theory might be useful for better understanding the dynamics of service-learning practice and thus for assisting in the design, running, and evaluation of service-learning projects. Additionally, we were interested to find out whether the specifics of our service-learning experience and knowledge, what we refer to as “critical service-learning,” might have something of value to contribute to the interdisciplinary and ever-broadening paradigm of complexity studies. Our findings respond to these two tasks in the affirmative: We conclude complex systems theory can be of benefit to service-learning practice in a conceptual, operational, and strategic capacity. In instances where critical service-learning practice initially appears to be incongruent with complex systems theory, conversely these instances instead highlight precisely how service-learning could advance the analysis of systems in complexity studies.

Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage II, 2019

Charles Péguy is referred to by Gilles Deleuze on twenty-one occasions, spread across ten books f... more Charles Péguy is referred to by Gilles Deleuze on twenty-one occasions, spread across ten books from Difference and Repetition (1968) to What is Philosophy? (1991). Although Deleuze’s usage of Péguy is somewhat narrow, he is employed at significant locations in the analysis of repetition and events, both of which are areas of capital importance to Deleuze’s broader philosophy. In this respect, while Deleuze is not a Péguyist and ignores many of Péguy’s main contributions to thought, Péguy nevertheless plays a vital role in the formation and explanation of Deleuze’s thinking.

Angelaki, 2018

The aim of this paper is to excavate and analyse Henri Bergson’s “problematic” thinking. This tas... more The aim of this paper is to excavate and analyse Henri Bergson’s “problematic” thinking. This task will be prosecuted through a close reading of his two-part introduction to The Creative Mind – the text in which Bergson most concisely and conclusively articulates the “problematic” character of his work. As I will attempt to show in this paper, Bergson’s work is “problematic” in two respects, one to do with methodology and the other metaphysics. These two, furthermore, are intimately entwined: on the one hand, Bergson’s method of problematisation emerges from the findings of his metaphysical inquiries, while on the other, it is through the application of his problematising method that the findings of his metaphysical inquiries can be deemed as reliably accurate. In exploring this “problematic” intersection of Bergson’s methodology and metaphysics, I will first discuss what Bergson takes to be one of the biggest problems for philosophy: the lack of adequate “precision.” As we will see, many of the major themes and concepts of Bergson’s work, such as duration and intuition, both spring from and converge on his efforts to address this problem. The pursuit of precision also calls for a “problematic approach” that is appropriate for the metaphysical reality it seeks to handle – an approach I will outline in the second part of this paper. This will be followed by a discussion of how Bergson’s problematic method/metaphysics involves a critique of what he refers to as “fictitious,” “phantom” or “pseudo-problems.” This “negative” aspect of Bergsonian problematisation will then be reconsidered in the final part of the paper alongside its “positive” dimension – posing problems in terms of time.

Handbook of Research Methods in Complexity Science: Theory & Application, co-edited by E. Mitleton-Kelly, A. Paraskevas, and C. Day. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018

A number of drivers for contemporary research, including impact case studies for the UK Research ... more A number of drivers for contemporary research, including impact case studies for the UK Research Excellence Framework, pathways to impact for the RCUK grants, and the need to demonstrate patient and public involvement for health research in the UK, are focussing attention on how to achieve public engagement in research. A key issue underlying these initiatives is the problem of how to secure culture change within Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) such that Public engagement becomes part of how research is done within that institution.

In 2008 RCUK funded six ‘Beacons for Public Engagement. Support was provided for each funded partner organisation to create a culture of engaging with the public to inform the design and delivery of research. We sought to understand how each Beacon had created the conditions for two-way engagement in the research design and delivery. We undertook an initial scoping study of the organisational culture within each Beacon and, using maximum variation sampling, selected seven resultant result projects which were our case studies. We used a participatory approach in the design and delivery of the research.

The findings from the case studies led us to conceptualise an ‘engagement cycle' which has three phases or elements:
- Creating the conditions: Development and hosting of a series of activities and events which bring researchers and non HEI communities together to foster the development of relations amongst academics, and between academics and potential non-academic partners.
- Co-creation of research: On the basis of these new partnerships, we anticipate projects of with mutual benefit to both academics and non-academic partners will be developed.
- Feedback loops to inform ongoing and future research: A process of formative and summative evaluation will run alongside these activities, with shared feedback, capturing the value and impact of the work and leading to future collaboration

In this chapter, we will discuss the approach we used to gather the data, how complexity theory underpins the approach and the interpretation, and how the findings led to the engagement cycle. We will also seek to show how it is possible to understand the dynamics of successful public engagement with research using complexity theory, and what implications this has had for the methods used.

Deleuze Studies, 2017

This paper will explore the notions of intensity, the virtual/actual and different/ciation in Gil... more 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.

The Journal of the Philosophy of History, 10:1, 2016

History occupies a somewhat awkward position in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Al... more History occupies a somewhat awkward position in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Although they often criticise history as a practice and advance alternatives that are explicitly anti-historical, such as ‘nomadology’ and ‘geophilosophy’, their scholarship is nevertheless littered with historical encounters and deeply influenced by historians such as Fernand Braudel. One of Deleuze and Guattari’s more significant engagements with history occurs through their reading and theory of universal history. In this paper I will explicate and critically analyse the nature of this universal history vis-à-vis its most pertinent counterpoint: Hegel’s philosophy of world history. In contrast to Hegel’s form of historicism, which universalizes by virtue of a unitary and totalizing force, Deleuze and Guattari develop a universalizing mechanism that is strictly devoid of any privileged essence. Following, Deleuze and Guattari’s form of universal history is marked above all by contingency as opposed to necessity. In this paper I will show precisely how. I will also go on to demonstrate how Deleuze and Guattari’s universal history offers the promise of an historical ontology commensurate with the processes of creativity and becoming, provided that appropriate steps are taken to reaffirm the radical contingency at its heart.

At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and Post-Kantian Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press), Jun 2015

Without doubt, Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism constituted a major event in philosophy – ... more Without doubt, Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism constituted a major event in philosophy – one that continues to be actualised in multifarious ways today. It has provided the terms of reference and inspiration for several philosophical traditions, most notably German Idealism and Romanticism, but also various currents across the spectrum of contemporary philosophy. In the work of Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s presence is pronounced. Despite Deleuze’s famous remark that his book on Kant’s critical philosophy was intended ‘as a book about an enemy’, this proclaimed hostility toward Kant rather proves that he regarded Kant as an important ‘intercessor’ whose concepts could be made to work in a new problematic setting. In fact, Deleuze expresses a kind of involuntary admiration for Kant: ‘there functions a sort of thinking machine, a sort of creation of concepts that is absolutely frightening’. And in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze compares Kant to ‘a great explorer’ since he is ‘the one who discovers the prodigious domain of the transcendental’. Kant’s transcendental philosophy meant turning away from metaphysical projects of grounding philosophy on transcendent principles and values; it replaces the concept of essence with the concept of sense or appearance and the search for the conditions of appearances; it introduces time as a structure of empirical consciousness. For Deleuze, the ‘greatest initiative of transcendental philosophy’ is the introduction of difference in the ‘I’: the subject is fractured in the transcendental ‘I’ that thinks, and thereby generates its own empirical passive self in the form of time. In this regard, Deleuze claims that Hölderlin, rather than Fichte or Hegel, is the true descendant to Kant, because he poses the problem of the pure and empty form of time on the level of Greek tragedy, showing its shattering effect in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. On Deleuze’s reading, Oedipus is guilty of committing a crime – specifically, the excessive act of separating himself from the gods and doing away with divine judgement – and is therefore compelled to err along the straight line of pure and empty time.
Remarks like these on Kant’s descendants (such as Maimon, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel) occur throughout Deleuze’s corpus; and yet, a close assessment of these connections remains missing. Thus, while Deleuze’s debt to Kant is clear and well acknowledged, a great deal remains to be said on both the manner of his relations to many post-Kantian thinkers and indeed the post-Kantian tenor of his own thought.

Bergson and the Art of Immanence, eds. John Mullarkey and Charlotte de Mille. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013

Since the revival of Bergson studies, a key aspect of his work has remained largely dormant among... more Since the revival of Bergson studies, a key aspect of his work has remained largely dormant amongst scholars: his philosophy of history. In this paper I will address this under-explored area of investigation by making some suggestions as to what Bergsonian philosophy might have to offer our understanding of history. This task will be guided throughout by a concern for the ontological nature of history. Although Bergson’s thoughts on history are often considered to be restricted to his Two Sources of Morality and Religion, I will demonstrate how Bergson develops and deploys an ontology of history and historical ontology in his prior texts that arguably plays a significant role within his broader thinking. In doing so, Bergsonian philosophy will be shown to advance strategies for escaping the traditional and dominant conceptions of history as representational, casual-linear and teleological – strategies that are subsequently expanded upon and modified by Bergsonian thinkers such as Charles Peguy, Arnold Toynbee and Gilles Deleuze.

The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, eds. Beniot Dillet, Iain MacKenzie and Robert Porter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013

As the immediate precursor to poststructuralism, the movement or paradigm of structuralism was na... more As the immediate precursor to poststructuralism, the movement or paradigm of structuralism was naturally responsible for determining many of poststructuralism’s salient features. But what was structuralism, and how are we to understand its transformation into poststructuralism? In this chapter I will address these issues by first outlining the contours of what might be called the image of structuralism. An appreciation of this image is necessary for a full understanding of the shift from structuralism to poststructuralism. Nevertheless, an acknowledgement of its limitations, of the inconsistencies it suppresses and the inaccuracies it perpetrates, is equally necessary. As I will therefore demonstrate, alongside the formation and propagation of the classical structuralist image runs a history of its transformation – a history of those aspects and individuals who subverted the image of structuralism in one way or other, as it was in the process of emerging.

Deleuze's Bergsonism, 2018

Edinburgh University Press, 2012

The Sociological Review, Volume 70 Issue 2, March, 2022

Edinburgh University Press, May 2015

Theory and Event, Vol.16, No.3, 2013, 2013

International Journal of Human Resource Development: Practice, Policy and Research, 2023

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible, 2022

The Sociological Review, 2022

What might it take to learn to think and live after progress? The notion of ‘progress’ is arguabl... more What might it take to learn to think and live after progress? The notion of ‘progress’ is arguably the defining idea of modernity: a civilisational imagery of a boundless, linear and upwards trajectory towards a future that, guided by reason and technology, will be ‘better’ than the present. It was this notion that placed techno-science at the heart of the modern political culture, and it was the global unevenness of ‘progress’ that imagined European imperialism as a civilising mission inflicted upon ‘backward’ others for their own sake. Whilst during the postcolonial era the modern idea of progress and its deleterious consequences on a global scale have deservingly been the object of fierce criticism, ‘progress’, its promises and its discontents still command global political imaginations, values and policies to this day. In the wake of its devastating social, political and ecological effects, this article argues that the imperative of progress is now one we cannot live with but do not know how to live without. Thinking of progress not as one modern value among others but as the very mode of evaluation from which modern values are derived, this article provides an introductory exploration of the question of what thinking and living after
progress might mean. It also provides an overview of the many contributions that compose this monograph, as divergent experiments in the radical revaluation of our values.

Futures of Work (Issue 19), 2021

Theory, Culture and Society, 2021

Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 2019

Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage II, 2019

Angelaki, 2018

Handbook of Research Methods in Complexity Science: Theory & Application, co-edited by E. Mitleton-Kelly, A. Paraskevas, and C. Day. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018

Deleuze Studies, 2017

The Journal of the Philosophy of History, 10:1, 2016

At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and Post-Kantian Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press), Jun 2015

Bergson and the Art of Immanence, eds. John Mullarkey and Charlotte de Mille. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013

The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, eds. Beniot Dillet, Iain MacKenzie and Robert Porter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013

Theory and Event, 2013

In this paper, I will address Deleuze and Guattari’s consideration of capitalism’s aborted birth ... more In this paper, I will address Deleuze and Guattari’s consideration of capitalism’s aborted birth in China by approaching the problematic from within their philosophy of history. To begin with, I will set out Deleuze and Guattari’s immediate answer, canvassing their machinic ontology and the significance that they place on immanence to the emergence of capitalism. In doing so, the question of history and historical interpretation will be raised. Following, I will investigate the status of such questions and inquire as to why Deleuze and Guattari continually pose them. From this analysis I will suggest that a critical philosophy of non-events can be found in Deleuze and Guattari’s work that is related to but distinct from their philosophy of the Event.

Deleuze Studies, 2013

This paper will address the question of the revolution in Gilles Deleuze's political ontology. Mo... more This paper will address the question of the revolution in Gilles Deleuze's political ontology. More specifically, it will explore what kind of person Deleuze believes is capable of bringing about genuine and practical transformation. Contrary to the belief that a Deleuzian programme for change centres on the facilitation of 'absolute deterritorialisation' and pure 'lines of flight', I will demonstrate how Deleuze in fact advocates a more cautious and incremental if not conservative practice that promotes the ethic of prudence. This will be achieved in part through a critical analysis of the dualistic premises upon which much Deleuzian political philosophy is based, alongside the topological triads that can also be found in his work. In light of this critique, Deleuze's thoughts on what it is to be and become a revolutionary will be brought into relief, giving rise to the question: who really is Deleuze's nomad, his true revolutionary or figure of transformation?

Critical Horizons, 2011

This paper will examine the relation between philosophical thought and the various milieus in whi... more This paper will examine the relation between philosophical thought and the various milieus in which such thought takes place using the late work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It will argue that their assessment of this relation involves a rearticulation of philosophy as an historiophilosophy. To claim that Deleuze and Guattari promote such a form of philosophy is contentious, as their work is often noted for implementing an ontological distinction between becoming and history, whereby the former is associated with the act of creation and the latter with retrospective representations of this creative process. Furthermore, when elaborating on the creative nature of philosophical thought, Deleuze and Guattari explicitly refer to philosophy as a 'geophilosophy' that is in contrast to history. Nevertheless, this paper will demonstrate that far from abandoning the category of history, Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis of the relations between philosophical thought and relative milieus suggests to us an historical ontology and methodology that is a critical part of philosophy’s nature.

Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Vol 18, No 1 (2010)

This paper will explore the possibility of a creative philosophy of history in the work of Gilles... more This paper will explore the possibility of a creative philosophy of history in the work of Gilles Deleuze. It will do so by focusing on Deleuze’s concepts of ‘intensity’ and ‘depth’, as discussed in his seminal work Difference and Repetition. By analysing these concepts in light of several historical thinkers whom Deleuze significantly draws upon (Bergson, Péguy and Braudel), I will show in this paper how Deleuze promotes a theory of history that is not opposed to his philosophy of becoming and creativity, but in concert with it.

Deleuze and History, eds. Jeffrey Bell and Claire Colebrook. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009

This paper studies the expression of Nietzsche’s untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of histor... more This paper studies the expression of Nietzsche’s untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. The concepts of immanence and the outside form a relation throughout Deleuze and Guattari’s work that leads to their radical conception of the event, and in particular the historical event. As we see in What Is Philosophy?, in conjunction with Foucault’s actual and Péguy’s aternal, the Nietzschean untimely provides a touchstone for Deleuze and Guattari’s explanation of creativity in the historical event: the unhistorical is located as both the force and the site from which the sedimentations of history emerge. But while Deleuze and Guattari share in Nietzsche’s attempt to facilitate creations counter to our historical present, it cannot be said that they explicitly mirror (or indeed faithfully recount) Nietzsche’s analysis of history, its terms, and its effects in society. By tracing the various uses of the untimely throughout Deleuze’s work, a differential ‘becoming/history’ materialises that simultaneously enhances aspects of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the untimely whilst conflating others.

Contemporary Political Theory, 2017

Time and Society, 2014

The growth of Deleuze Studies over the last decade has been extraordinary. There are now two annu... more The growth of Deleuze Studies over the last decade has been extraordinary. There are now two annual summits on the work of Deleuze (and Guattari), each attended by hundreds of scholars. And, to the surprise of many non-Deleuzians, the quantity of publications on Deleuze today far outstrips that of his eminent contemporaries Foucault and Derrida. Nevertheless, Deleuze remains a marginal figure outside of the field that bears his name, especially in philosophy circles. Furthermore, within the Deleuze community, key aspects of his philosophy remain poorly understood. James Williams' latest book on Deleuze makes considerable strides in rectifying these twin problems.

How to reimagine human and more-than-human arts of living and flourishing from the ruins of the m... more How to reimagine human and more-than-human arts of living and flourishing from the ruins of the modern idea of progress? What would counter-progressive stories sound like? What would they read like? What might earthbound, collaborative forms of storytelling engender after progress? We invite storytelling proposals from groups and individuals from around the world, with stories that might help us envisage ways of living and dying well outside of the modern coordinates of progress.