From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence

305 Pages·2022·3.725 MB·English

by  Christine Daigle (editor), Terrance H. McDonald (editor)

From Deleuze and Guattari
to Posthumanism
Theory in the New Humanities
Series editor: Rosi Braidotti
Theory is back! The vitality of critical thinking in the world today is palpable, as is a
spirit of insurgency that sustains it. Theoretical practice has exploded with renewed
energy in media, society, the arts and the corporate world. New generations of critical
‘studies’ areas have grown alongside the classical radical epistemologies of the 1970s:
gender, feminist, queer, race, postcolonial and subaltern studies, cultural studies, film,
television and media studies.
This series aims to present cartographic accounts of emerging critical theories and to
reflect the vitality and inspirational force of on-going theoretical debates.
Editorial board
Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at Arlington, USA)
Simone Bignall (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)
Judith Butler (University of Berkeley, USA)
Christine Daigle (Brock University, Canada)
Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Engin Isin (Queen Mary University of London, UK, and University of London
Institute in Paris, France)
Patricia MacCormack (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)
Achille Mbembe (University Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Henrietta Moore (University College London, UK)
Other titles in the series:
Posthuman Glossary, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova
Conflicting Humanities, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy
General Ecology, edited by Erich Hörl with James Burton
Philosophical Posthumanism, Francesca Ferrando
The Philosophy of Matter, Rick Dolphijn
Materialist Phenomenology, Manuel DeLanda
From Deleuze and Guattari
to Posthumanism
Philosophies of Immanence
Edited by
Christine Daigle and Terrance H. McDonald
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks
of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2022
Copyright © Christine Daigle, Terrance H. McDonald, and Contributors, 2022
Christine Daigle and Terrance H. McDonald have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. x constitute an extension
of this copyright page.
Cover design by Ben Anslow
Cover images: George Berkeley (1685–1753) Anglo-Irish philosopher aka Bishop Berkeley
(© Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy); George Berkeley (1685–1753), aka Bishop Berkeley (Bishop
of Cloyne). Anglo-Irish philosopher. Vanderbank (© Classic Image / Alamy); A vertical
oval ornate decorative hand carved natural wooden frame (© Image Farm Inc. / Alamy);
A vertical gold thin decorative ornate oval antique frame (© Image Farm Inc. / Alamy)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but
can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-6222-5
ePDF: 978-1-3502-6223-2
eBook: 978-1-3502-6224-9
Series: Theory in the New Humanities
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www .bloomsbury .com
and sign up for our newsletters.
Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Posthumanisms through Deleuze and Guattari Christine Daigle
and Terrance H. McDonald 1
Part One Philosophical genealogies – From Deleuze
and Guattari to posthumanism
1 Posthuman neo-materialisms and affirmation Rosi Braidotti 23
2 Deleuzian traces: The self of the polyp Christine Daigle 41
3 The art of good encounters: Spinoza, Deleuze and Macherey on moving
from passive to active joy Bruce Baugh 63
4 Symmetry and asymmetry in conceptual and morphological formations:
The difference plant body growth can make to human thought
Karen L. F. Houle 85
5 Back to earth! A comparative study between Husserl’s and Deleuze’s
cosmologies Alain Beaulieu 106
Part Two From Deleuze and Guattari to posthuman aesthetics
6 Posthuman cinema: Terrence Malick and a Cinema of Life
Terrance H. McDonald 129
7 Affect/face/close-up: Beyond the affection-image in postsecular
cinema Russell J. A. Kilbourn 147
8 ‘Subaltern’ imaginings of artificial intelligence: Enthiran and
CHAPPiE William Brown 170
9 Becoming-squid, becoming-insect and the refrain of/from
becoming-imperceptible in contemporary science fiction
David H. Fleming 188
Part Three The politics of Deleuze, Guattari and posthumanism
10 The biopolitics of posthumanism in Tears in Rain Sherryl Vint 211
11 Dis/abled reflections on posthumanism and biotech Martin Boucher 226
vi Contents
12 Deleuze after Afro-pessimism Claire Colebrook 250
13 Incorporeal transformations in truth and reconciliation: A posthuman
approach to transitional justice Mickey Vallee 268
Index 283
Contributors
Bruce Baugh is Professor Emeritus, philosophy, at Thompson Rivers University. He is
the author of French Hegel: From Surrealism to Postmodernism (2003) and Philosophers’
Walks (2021) and the editor and translator of Benjamin Fondane, Existential Monday
(2016). He has authored many articles and essays on Fondane, Sartre, Derrida, Spinoza
and Deleuze.
Alain Beaulieu is Professor of philosophy at Laurentian University. He is the author
of Gilles Deleuze et la phénoménologie (2006) and Gilles Deleuze et ses contemporains
(2011). He is the editor of Gilles Deleuze: héritage philosophique (2005), Michel Foucault
et le contrôle social (2008) and Abécédaire de Martin Heidegger (2008). He has co-edited
Michel Foucault and Power Today (2006) with David Gabbard. He has authored many
articles and essays on Foucault and Deleuze.
Martin Boucher is a doctoral candidate in Human Studies at Laurentian University
in Ontario, Canada. His research deals with the politics of abnormality in the social
sciences and the philosophy of science more generally. He is also the Executive Director
of a peer-led mental health organization, where he seeks to further the consumer/
survivor movement and the role of peers in the mental health system.
Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Centre for
Humanities at the University of Utrecht. She is the author of Patterns of Dissonance
(1991), Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002),
Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics (2006), Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual
Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (2011) and The Posthuman (2013). She
also edited After Cosmopolitanism (2013) with Patrick Hanafin and Bolette Blaagaard
and Revisiting Normativity with Deleuze (2012) with Patricia Pisters.
William Brown is an assistant professor of Film at the University of British
Columbia, as well as an Honorary Fellow for the School of Arts at the University of
Roehampton, London. He is the author of Non-Cinema: Global Digital Filmmaking
and the Multitude (2018) and, with David H Fleming, of The Squid Cinema from
Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia (2020). Forthcoming
works include Navigating from the White Anthropocene to the Black Chthulucene
and Infinite Ontology: Streaming Media in the Chthulucene (with David H Fleming,
under consideration). He is also a maker of no-budget films, including This Is
Cinema (2018) and Mantis (forthcoming).
Claire Colebrook is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State University.
She is the author of Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed (1997), Gilles Deleuze (2002),
viii Contributors
Understanding Deleuze (2002) and Deleuze and the Meaning of Life (2010). She
is the co-editor, with Tom Cohen, of a series of monographs for Open Humanities
Press: Critical Climate Change. She recently completed two books on Extinction for
Open Humanities Press – The Death of the Posthuman and Sex After Life – and has
co-authored (with Jason Maxwell) Agamben (2015) and (with Tom Cohen and J. Hillis
Miller) Twilight of the Anthropocene Idols (2016).
Christine Daigle is a professor of philosophy at Brock University. She is the director
of the Posthumanism Research Institute. She is the author of Le nihilisme est-il
un humanisme? Étude sur Nietzsche et Sartre (2005), Routledge Critical Thinkers:
Jean-Paul Sartre (2009), and Nietzsche as Phenomenologist. Becoming What One
Is (2021). She is the editor of Existentialist Thinkers and Ethics (2006) in which
she contributed a chapter on Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics. She has also co-edited
Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence (2009) with Jacob Golomb and Nietzsche
and Phenomenology. Life, Power, Subjectivity with Élodie Boublil (2013). She is the
author of a number of articles on Nietzsche, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and most
recently on posthumanism.
David H. Fleming is Senior Lecturer in the Communication, Media and Culture
division at the University of Stirling, Scotland. His research interests gravitate
around the intersectionalities of technology, thought, philosophy and images. He is
co-author of The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of
Chthulumedia (with William Brown) (2020), Chinese Urban Shi-nema: Cinematicity,
Society and Millennial China  (with Simon Harrison) (2020), and the author
of Unbecoming Cinema: Unsettling Encounters with Ethical Event Films (2017). He is
currently working on projects exploring Infinite Ontology and racializing machines
in the streaming era.
Karen L. F. Houle is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. She has
edited the volume Minor Ethics: Deleuzian Variations (2021) with Casey Ford and
Suzanne McCullagh, and a second edited volume Hegel and Deleuze: Together Again
for the First Time (2013) with Jim Vernon. Houle is the author of Toward a New Image
of Thought: Responsibility, Complexity and Abortion (2013). Her academic articles build
off the work of Spinoza, Derrida, Irigaray, Bataille, Foucault, Cixous, and Deleuze and
Guattari. She is also the award-winning author of three books of poetry, Ballast (2000),
During (2005) and The Grand River Watershed: A Folk Ecology (2019), which were
nominated for the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award. 
Russell J. A. Kilbourn is a professor in English and film studies at Wilfrid Laurier
University. He publishes in memory studies, film theory, adaptation, and comparative
literature. His books include Cinema, Memory, Modernity: The Representation of
Memory from the Art Film to Transnational Cinema (2010) and The Cinema of Paolo
Sorrentino: Commitment to Style (2020), and he is co-editor of The Memory Effect: The
Remediation of Memory in Literature and Film (2013).
Contri butors ix
Terrance H. McDonald is a sessional lecturer II of cinema studies at the University of
Toronto Mississauga. Film philosophy, film genre, posthumanism and feminist media
studies are his main research areas, which include a primary focus on Hollywood
cinema and secondary research on popular cinemas in a global context. His work is
published in Men and Masculinities, NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity
Studies and Symposium, among other venues. Currently, he is working towards the
completion of a monograph: Posthuman Cinema: Film Philosophy for Life Yet to Come.
Mickey Vallee teaches in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies at Athabasca
University, where he holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Community, Identity
and Digital Media. He has co-edited Demystifying Deleuze: An Introductory Assemblage
of Crucial Concepts (2013) with Rob Shields. He has authored essays and articles on
Žižek, Deleuze and Glenn Gould published in such venues as Deleuze Studies and
Cultural Studies. He is the author of Sounding Bodies Sounding Worlds. An Exploration
of Embodiments in Sound (2019).
Sherryl Vint is Professor of English and media and cultural studies at the University of
California, Riverside. She is the author of Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology Subjectivity,
Science Fiction (2007), Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal
(2010), Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014), Science Fiction: The Essential
Knowledge (2020) and Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction
(2021). She has also edited or co-edited several books, including most recently After
the Human: Culture, Theory and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century (2020).