Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze was a French 20th century philosopher. His main philosophical project was the systematic inversion of the traditional metaphysical relationship between identity and difference.
Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity:
to say that "X is different from Y" assumes X and Y have identities ... But ... Deleuze says that apparent identities such as "X" and "Y" are actually composed of endless series of differences.
Deleuze's work led Michel Foucalt (another 20th century French philosopher) to declare that "one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian." Source: Wikipedia.
Geography and Schizophrenia: Deleuzification of the Discipline?
Conference Presentation by Mark Bonta, Delta State University
Despite an earthly and materialist approach to ontology, a complexification of terrestrial processes worthy of the most intricately detailed earth science treatise, and an obviously geographic terminology, A Thousand Plateaus has not been readily adopted by academic geographers. This paper probes the geographicality of ATP and its potential for the discipline while at the same time offering a cautionary message about the likelihood of its ontology working its way into geographic thought. After a discussion of postmodern misreadings of ATP, I elaborate on substantive contributions it can make to our conceptualization of space, place, landscape, and region, the subjects of interminable quarrelling in the discipline. To conclude, I illustrate the possibilities of ATP in geography in a brief presentation of a case study in Honduras.
Object-Oriented Ontology
Conference Presentation by Aden Evens, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Object-orientation is not only the latest paradigm in computer programming but underlies the operation of every program, archaic to cutting-edge. Computer programs are wholly determined by a spec, which measures success unequivocally in terms of determinate goals (objects). Thus, programs are driven by objects, and the job of the programmer seems plodding, churning out code governed by a preestablished aim. But something novel takes place when the object is lifted from the world and placed within the program. For an object in a program represents an additional dimension, a pleat or fold in the flat plane of the digital code. Objects allow computer programs to refer to themselves, to gain a (limited) sense of context. Structuring objects to manipulate a program's self-reference, programmers exceed their mundane charge to become creative. This paper analyzes objects as the site where human desire is folded into a computer program.
Chaosmologies: Chaos and Thought in What is Philosophy?, with Quantum Field Theory
Conference Presentation by Arkady Plotnitsky
The paper will explore the relationships between the philosophical underpinnings of quantum field theory and Deleuze's concept of the virtual, most especially in conjunction with the particular idea of chaos (as an infinite speed of birth and disappearance of forms, rather than chaos as disorder) found in Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy?, the idea that, I shall argue, transpires and appears to be in part derived by them from the philosophical conceptuality of quantum field theory. The paper will then discuss, from this perspective, the relationships between philosophy and science, and their respective ways of confronting chaos, as these subjects are considered in the book.
Previous three are quoted verbatim from conference page: http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/exp/schmidgen_e/abstract_deleuze.html.
