This is the first in a series of posts, initiated by the suggestions of Evan Duq in his blog ‘Working on concepts‘. I’m in the throes of some intensive writing practice over the summer as I try to get the first draft of my new book into shape and currently am working on a paper for the ‘Strange Encounters: Kant and Deleuze’ conference we’re organising at Greenwich…so throwing LOS into the mix should be good.

I’m using the Athlone 1990 edition and all references are to that unless otherwise stated. Whilst this is a re-reading (in my case) of LOS I am going to approach it to a large extent as though it were a fresh reading…inevitably this will be slightly distorted by the existing annotations in the text but what I want to note is that these are reading notes rather than sustained critical commentary. Certain comments are inevitably going to be extremely tenuous and at times plain wrong…the freedom to be wrong, however, is part of the nature of the internet and why students quoting texts and online commentaries should remember caveat emptor!

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LOS begins with a rather short and sweet preface that takes on a quite traditional role of introducing the text rather than philosophically positioning the reader in regard to the text. The first thing of note is the reference to ‘modern reader’ and a set of elements to be found within Lewis Carroll that would ‘please’ such a modern reader. The elements seem to refer to structuralist type aspects of form, as well as aspects of a psychoanalytic interest (children’s books “or, rather, books for little girls” and an explicit mention of “a profound psychoanalytic content“). Who, then, is the ‘modern reader’? Someone embedded within a psychoanalytic practice of reading? Someone embedded, moreoever, in a specifically structuralist psychoanalytic reading, ie; a Lacanian? Is the suggestion – perhaps – that Deleuze is presenting a text which should be of profound interest to the Lacanian reader and as such a common ground of discussion or theoretical concept creation? It seems likely, at least at the moment, that this is the case. If so this suggests a certain ‘audience’ for LOS – viz, the Lacanian reader, but an audience that needs to attend to something usually forgotten. “Over and above the immediate pleasure” Deleuze says (and I would want to check the French edition here to see whether jouissance is the specific term at work in this sentence) “there is something else” in the work of Carroll, that being the play of sense and nonsense. This “connection between language” (one form of sense) “and the unconscious” is readily present, Deleuze says, but he then indicates again the ‘something else’ he wants to bring to attention, “what else is this marriage connected with” (xiii). Read the rest of this entry »

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There’s an interesting online psych project over here at Project Implicit…an interesting thing mentioned on Thought Capital’s blog post about the use of ’empirical data’ in ’evidenced-based meta-analyses’. I presume these EBMA’s are some sort of peculiar category of philosophical activity, perhaps connected to the idea of ’experimental philosophy’ which, whilst fascinating, seems to sometimes miss the point. Can evidence ever establish particular principles of thought? If not, then is it for a philosophy a question of giving up principles or of giving up evidence? Is there a dichotomy here that cannot (in principle or in fact) be resolved?

This difficulty, of what we might call the distinction between the quid facti and the quid juris is critical to any attempt to understand transcendental philosophy. There is an argument being made (James Williams, Dan Smith etc) that it is in fact principles that are crucial for Deleuze, that the quid juris has in some sense a priority derivable from an affinity of Deleuze’s method with that expressed by Leibniz ’Principle of Sufficient Reason’. Everything has to have a reason for existing, a ratio existendi, rather than simply a reason for being, ratio essendi. In fact, Smith argue, Leibniz in fact added other epistemological and metaphysical conditions in the PSR with the notions of ratio cognoscendi (a reason for how we can know the thing, the principle of indiscernibles) and a ratio fiendi (reason for becoming out of that which already is or law of continuity preventing arbitrary MacGuffin like inventions during the course of an account). The PSR aims to fulfill all that we would ask for in either of the quid moves, such that a question of fact or principle is capable of being responded to by understanding the sufficient reason for a thing.

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Books I like and some hardware/software as well (not much)

(This is a list produced by Alan Sondheim – not me – and something that he does maybe once or twice a year. I’ve known Alan online for a good few years now, in fact since I was first at University as an undergrad, and his eclectic and curious reading patterns are reflected in his strange and fascinating work as both a theorist and artist. He also simply offers leads and possible avenues of research that I simply couldn’t find anywhere else and as such is a fantastic connection to plug into. In this list I’m particularly interested in the The Alpbacj Symposium 1968 papers, the Steve Talbott, The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus and the Olympus WS-300M, …the last list of these I posted was in November last year and you can see some of Alan’s current work on avatars, utilising the Second Life interface, over here on YouTube.)

I’m behind in my reviews; the last few months have been a mess. I may be missing some books. I may have misplaced. others. I hunger for reading, but it’s all transparent, pathetic, collapsed. There’s nothing to say about reading that hasn’t been said before. Humans compress history’s repetition until the world’s squeezed out. If I’m missing a book in what follows, forgive me; the oversight wasn’t deliberate, just an effect of physiology. The following books are in no particular order; for the most part, they’re books that have been more than useful, have been inspirational, works I’ve returned to at times. I’m including some miscellaneous reviews of software/hardware as well. (First off, apologies for the poor style below; it’s hard for me to convey sustained excitement, but such underlies most of what follows.)

Buddhist Dictionary, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka. This is an amazing and often technical work, documenting the terms of the Pali Canon and beyond; it has information I literally haven’t found elsewhere. The Pali vocabulary is extensive, often highly structured conceptually, and this has proved, not only to be an invaluable guide, but also an interesting read in itself.

I am a Cat (three volumes), Soseki Natsume, translated Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson. The original Japanese work appeared in the first decade of the 20th century; it’s an amazing rumination on everything by a cat. The work is reminiscent of Sterne and I found myself enveloped in it (in a manner similar to reading something like The Journey to the West); it says a great deal about Japanese modernization and city life, and is beautifully written. It’s not an ’animal’ story in any sense of the term. The work’s available from Tuttle. (Alexanne Don introduced me to this years ago.)
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