Janell Watson | Virginia Tech (original) (raw)
Papers by Janell Watson
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2023
Modern Language Review, Oct 1, 2002
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022
philoSOPHIA, 2015
If the term “Anthropocene” designates the global influence of the human species over its terrestr... more If the term “Anthropocene” designates the global influence of the human species over its terrestrial habitat, then its arrival profoundly changes a number of relations that have long occupied Western philosophy: that between humans and animals; between humans and nature; and between humans and their technologies. The possibility that humans have transformed not only the biology but also the geology of the earth brings to the forefront the physical world, whose corporeal materiality was all but ignored by mid-twentieth-century continental philosophy, focused almost exclusively on language and politics. As Michel Serres put it in 1990, “Our a-cosmic philosophies, for almost half a century now, have been holding forth only on language or politics, writing or logic” (1995b, 29). Technicians and scientists have created a new world, observes Serres, while philosophers act as if they still live in the old one (2001, 4). By the time Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer formally introduced th...
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
Review of Radical Political Economics, 2001
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
SubStance
More than one fellow scholar has asked me why I read Serres, given his apparent sexism. For examp... more More than one fellow scholar has asked me why I read Serres, given his apparent sexism. For example, he makes numerous first-person references to female lovers, describes volcanoes as vaginas in Biogea, and fixates on a naked female model in Genesis. However, he also recognizes, celebrates, and valorizes mothers, the goddesses of the hearth, and academically superior millennial women. Associating the history of male dominance with war, exploitation, and domestic violence, Serres develops several interesting theories of sex and gender, including a gendered version of Empedocles's love-hate cycle in The Birth of Physics; the mother as universal hostess in The Parasite and Rome; inclusive androgyny in "The Hermaphrodite"; and a post-patriarchal family tree of science in Rameaux. Serres makes no attempt to unify these theories, but all of them uphold his philosophical commitments to multiplicity; originary chaos; the meandering flows of time; the world of things; the laws of nature and the laws of humans; and the necessity of mixing mathematics and science with religion and narrative in the relentless pursuit of embodied knowledge. Sex and gender inflect his hopeful vision of a philosophy of inclusion and a politics of symbiosis capable of overcoming the exploitation and strife perpetuated under patriarchal thanatocracy, in order to enable the triumph of love and peace under the reign of an androgynous cosmocracy. Serres situates sex and gender within the larger cosmos contemplated by ancient philosophy, to which he returns with the aid of modern mathematics and science. Sex is not a universal feature of the cosmos, he observes, pointing out that "division by gender concerns only sexed living things, some social roles, sometimes language" (Troubadour 15). Sex and gender do not appear at the scale of the cosmos, but only at the scales of the bios (sexed organisms) and polis (social roles, language). Although sex is not universal, direction is, he notes, explaining that "Only some living things have the pleasure of a sex, whereas everything, in the world, whether animate or inanimate, is provided with a direction. Direction goes further, deeper than sex" (Troubadour 14). In order to form matter, atoms must change direction, according to the theory of the clinamen. Living bodies orient themselves in one direction or another, symmetrically
Fibreculture Journal, 2008
Félix Guattari, writing both on his own and with philosopher Gilles Deleuze, developed the notion... more Félix Guattari, writing both on his own and with philosopher Gilles Deleuze, developed the notion of schizoanalysis out of his frustration with what he saw as the shortcomings of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, namely the orientation toward neurosis, emphasis on language, and lack of socio-political engagement. Guattari was analyzed by Lacan, attended the seminars from the beginning, and remained a member of Lacan's school until his death in 1992. His unorthodox lacanism grew out of his clinical work with schizophrenics and involvement in militant politics. Paradoxically, even as he rebelled theoretically and practically against Lacan's 'mathemes of the unconscious' and topology of knots, Guattari ceaselessly drew diagrams and models. Deleuze once said of him that 'His ideas are drawings, or even diagrams.' Guattari's singled-authored books are filled with strange figures, which borrow from fields as diverse as linguistics, cultural anthropology, ch...
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2023
Modern Language Review, Oct 1, 2002
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022
philoSOPHIA, 2015
If the term “Anthropocene” designates the global influence of the human species over its terrestr... more If the term “Anthropocene” designates the global influence of the human species over its terrestrial habitat, then its arrival profoundly changes a number of relations that have long occupied Western philosophy: that between humans and animals; between humans and nature; and between humans and their technologies. The possibility that humans have transformed not only the biology but also the geology of the earth brings to the forefront the physical world, whose corporeal materiality was all but ignored by mid-twentieth-century continental philosophy, focused almost exclusively on language and politics. As Michel Serres put it in 1990, “Our a-cosmic philosophies, for almost half a century now, have been holding forth only on language or politics, writing or logic” (1995b, 29). Technicians and scientists have created a new world, observes Serres, while philosophers act as if they still live in the old one (2001, 4). By the time Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer formally introduced th...
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
Review of Radical Political Economics, 2001
The Deleuze and Guattari Dictionary, 2013
SubStance
More than one fellow scholar has asked me why I read Serres, given his apparent sexism. For examp... more More than one fellow scholar has asked me why I read Serres, given his apparent sexism. For example, he makes numerous first-person references to female lovers, describes volcanoes as vaginas in Biogea, and fixates on a naked female model in Genesis. However, he also recognizes, celebrates, and valorizes mothers, the goddesses of the hearth, and academically superior millennial women. Associating the history of male dominance with war, exploitation, and domestic violence, Serres develops several interesting theories of sex and gender, including a gendered version of Empedocles's love-hate cycle in The Birth of Physics; the mother as universal hostess in The Parasite and Rome; inclusive androgyny in "The Hermaphrodite"; and a post-patriarchal family tree of science in Rameaux. Serres makes no attempt to unify these theories, but all of them uphold his philosophical commitments to multiplicity; originary chaos; the meandering flows of time; the world of things; the laws of nature and the laws of humans; and the necessity of mixing mathematics and science with religion and narrative in the relentless pursuit of embodied knowledge. Sex and gender inflect his hopeful vision of a philosophy of inclusion and a politics of symbiosis capable of overcoming the exploitation and strife perpetuated under patriarchal thanatocracy, in order to enable the triumph of love and peace under the reign of an androgynous cosmocracy. Serres situates sex and gender within the larger cosmos contemplated by ancient philosophy, to which he returns with the aid of modern mathematics and science. Sex is not a universal feature of the cosmos, he observes, pointing out that "division by gender concerns only sexed living things, some social roles, sometimes language" (Troubadour 15). Sex and gender do not appear at the scale of the cosmos, but only at the scales of the bios (sexed organisms) and polis (social roles, language). Although sex is not universal, direction is, he notes, explaining that "Only some living things have the pleasure of a sex, whereas everything, in the world, whether animate or inanimate, is provided with a direction. Direction goes further, deeper than sex" (Troubadour 14). In order to form matter, atoms must change direction, according to the theory of the clinamen. Living bodies orient themselves in one direction or another, symmetrically
Fibreculture Journal, 2008
Félix Guattari, writing both on his own and with philosopher Gilles Deleuze, developed the notion... more Félix Guattari, writing both on his own and with philosopher Gilles Deleuze, developed the notion of schizoanalysis out of his frustration with what he saw as the shortcomings of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, namely the orientation toward neurosis, emphasis on language, and lack of socio-political engagement. Guattari was analyzed by Lacan, attended the seminars from the beginning, and remained a member of Lacan's school until his death in 1992. His unorthodox lacanism grew out of his clinical work with schizophrenics and involvement in militant politics. Paradoxically, even as he rebelled theoretically and practically against Lacan's 'mathemes of the unconscious' and topology of knots, Guattari ceaselessly drew diagrams and models. Deleuze once said of him that 'His ideas are drawings, or even diagrams.' Guattari's singled-authored books are filled with strange figures, which borrow from fields as diverse as linguistics, cultural anthropology, ch...
by Emine Gorgul, Daniela Angelucci, Andrej Radman, Paulo de Assis, Burcu Baykan, Radek Przedpełski, Thomas Mical, jan jagodzinski, Janell Watson, Kenneth Surin, and Cristina Póstleman