bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Work of Art and the Death of God in Nietzsche and Agamben
Authors: Lemm Vanessa
Published: May 2022

The repercussions of Nietzsche’s idea of the death of God were not only felt in the religious sphere, but also in how we think about the meaning and place of creation and creativity in life. Agamben’s discussion of creativity as ‘inoperativity’ is the latest, important contribution to the debate, arguably initiated by Existentialism, on how the death of God relates to life as material for artistic creation. I situate Agamben’s theses on ‘inoperativity’ in dialogue with Nietzsche’s discussion of the death of God and the ‘work of art without artist.’ Agamben helps us to get beyond the Existentialist interpretation of the human subject as creator of its own life (bios) by proposing an anarchic conception of giving artistic form to life (zoe) that deconstructs the position of mastery over life assigned to modern subjectivity and de-centres the idea of the human agency in the process of creation. However, Agamben’s conception of the artistic life downplays or avoids other features of Nietzsche’s thinking on the death of God and creation that are tied to animality and the divinity of nature.
Sartre and Agamben: Confronting Nothingness and the (Apparent) Death of God
Authors: Gillespie John
Published: May 2022

Nietzsche proclaims the Death of God and the potentially cataclysmic social effects of a world without absolute values. Jean-Paul Sartre evidences its slow unwinding, portraying the individual acting in god-like freedom, yet never successfully overcoming the temptation of a persistent Godlike perspective. Freedom is set against the Death of God.Agamben, unlike Sartre, in rejecting the negativity of the Death of God, is not directly anti-theistic, but secularises and undermines orthodox Christian concepts, retaining them, yet fundamentally changing them for positive use in a world without God. He emphasises language as the ethos, the dwelling-place of humanity, rather than freedom. Nihilism and negativity are rejected. In neither case is God as dead as we might expect.
Mass Image, Anthropocene Image, Image Commons
Authors: Sean Cubitt
Published: May 2022

This chapter outlines key themes and premises for the discussion of the mass image, the Anthropocene image and image commons. The discussion relates to a range of implications as to the meaning and meaninglessness, location and immateriality, and ecology and abundance of the mass image. At the centre of the discussion is the question of the database that is the synthetic element and infrastructure through which the image exists. On one hand, the mass image aspires to become the most ecological image possible: complete, formed of intricate webs of connections, and permanently evolving. On the other, it is the most environmental of images, in the sense that it constructs a total image of the world so complex and complete that it excludes the world it depicts, turning it into pure context, pure environment, that which surrounds what it truly prizes: an inscription of the world as data.
Fat Fingers and Private Truths: Between Manners and Morals in Eeldrop and Appleplex
Authors: de Villiers Rick
Published: May 2022

Chapter 1 posits 1917 as a watershed year in Eliot’s writing. It argues that with his only short story, Eeldrop and Appleplex, Eliot edges away from social embarrassment towards theological shame - that is, a sense of sin. Undoubtedly the least ‘canonical’ of Eliot’s creative works, the story embodies diffusive feelings out of which humility emerges in the lower case. That is to say that in in its blurring of grave religious commentary and self-directed mockery, the story refuses to take itself too seriously. Situating Eeldrop and Appleplex in relation to Eliot’s early poetry, the chapter first considers moments of embarrassment and disgust, and how these affective experiences impede an appreciation of a given situation’s moral reality. Contrasted with this is Eliot’s valuation of private truth and fixed moral standards, both in Eeldrop and Appleplex and in Eliot’s criticism. The short story is shown to anticipate Eliot’s critique of ‘bovarysme’: the effort to dramatise oneself against one’s environment so as to not lose face or sink into shame - an act that resists humility.
Mr Eliot’s Sermons and Sermonising: Participation, Good Will and Humility in Murder in the Cathedral
Authors: de Villiers Rick
Published: May 2022

Chapter 3 focuses on specific theological reiterations that define Eliot’s understanding of Christian humility between 1927 and 1935. It grapples with humility as a component of Christian sacrifice and reflects on the relation between belief and action. The sermon of Murder in the Cathedral serves as a structuring device to discuss these statements, both because many of these theological statements are vicariously rehearsed in Thomas Becket’s Christmas sermon and also because no other work by Eliot so pointedly dramatises the proximity between humility and spiritual pride. The chapter closely discusses the influence of the seventeenth-century divine, Lancelot Andrewes, and the nineteenth-century philosopher, F. H. Bradley - two authors who played a determining role in Eliot’s conception of humility and his scepticism about human good will. It also expounds the significance of a hitherto unexamined biblical source for the sermon’s verses of scripture that further threads the continuity between grace, humility, and good will. In circling around recurring phrases and influences, the chapter traces a conceptual genealogy behind the play’s sermon and offer a revaluation of Murder in the Cathedral as the creative culmination of Eliot’s ongoing engagement with secular humanism and, by extension, humanistic humility.
A Defence of Wretchedness: Molloy and Humiliation
Authors: de Villiers Rick
Published: May 2022

Chapter 4 worries the ethics of approaching others’ humiliation. Here, humiliation manifests as an individuating property in Beckett’s writing: the thing that ‘mobilises’ his creatures and also confers identity. In the first instance, this invites meta-critical reflection on the dangers of overly familiar narratives and concepts in Beckett studies. With close reference to Molloy, humiliation is subsequently explored as an ontologically determining phenomenon that should preclude the conflation and consolidation of private suffering. A final section draws more broadly on Beckett’s mistrust of charity and posits humility as an important ethical criterion when dealing with the suffering of others.
Columbo
Authors: Martin-Jones David
Published: May 2022

Columbo is fifty years old. A global smash in the 1970s, it is now a cult favourite. Why this enduring popularity? Is it solely Peter Falk’s iconic performance? In fact, Columbo reveals how our current globalized world – of 24/7 capital, invasive surveillance, and online labour – emerged in the late Twentieth Century. Columbo illuminates how our attention is channelled, via technologies like television and computers, to influence how we think and act. Columbo emerged alongside shows like Kojak and The Rockford Files. But re-viewing Columbo today reveals how contemporary hits – from Elementary to The Purge – continue to shape how we pay attention to our world.
Performing: Falk Acts/ Columbo Pays Attention
Authors: Martin-Jones David
Published: May 2022

This chapter argues that the how of Falk’s performance as Columbo (uncovered by considering the different influences on his acting style) determines the why of his performance. Columbo personifies the need to pay attention 24/7. He performs the thinking process which typifies the attentive labour demanded by late capitalism. Falk/Columbo’s performance thus physically embodies attentive labour. This is evident in Falk’s unique performance, mixing aspects of the method, live television, US indie, and early silent Hollywood comedy acting styles. This how of his acting is key to grasping the why of it. Columbo’s investigative style proceeds through this performance, which enables a gently invasive unofficial intrusion into a suspect’s life, a police surveillance of the everyday. This is why Columbo acts as he does.
This performance casts doubt over whether the law assumes innocence or guilt, a confusion indicative of the always-on-trial (in public, in private) nature of life since the end of the Twentieth Century. This confusion emphasises the ambiguity which surrounds character (real? performed?) in a life perpetually surveilled by cameras. Thus, whilst Columbo’s viewers are engaged in playing its memory game, they also come to understand the supplementary matter of how the attentive labourer should “act”.
Policing: Not Class, History
Authors: Martin-Jones David
Published: May 2022

It is often thought that Columbo offers a critique of class inequality. However, Columbo does not police class per se. Columbo indicates much about changing attitudes towards class, gender and race in late Twentieth Century USA. However, Ultimately Columbo’s role is to police history. Columbo seeks to recreate the veracity of history, in contrast to faked versions of the past used as alibis by murderers. To ensure the truth of history against its fiendish manipulation by technology, Columbo uses older, theatrical, devices. Specifically: staged entrapments, and recreations of the past. Columbo is thus akin to the idea of “revenge” from the theatrical tradition of the revenge tragedy. Acting on behalf of the murdered victim he seeks justice for an unjustly taken life on behalf of life
itself.
Whilst enjoying Columbo‘s complex memory game, another of the subsidiary processes is discerning the attentive labourer’s proper position within late capitalist society. Whilst social inequality may seem unjust, it is not “criminal”. Murder, though, marks the limit of the extent to which one person may benefit at the expense of another. This is because it threatens the status quo which retains the existing social inequality.
Conclusion: Paying Attention 24/7
Authors: Martin-Jones David
Published: May 2022

The Conclusion draws together the threads from the preceding chapters to illustrate how Columbo illustrates that living and working during the latter decades of the Twentieth Century may entail a long life of 24/7 attentiveness. The complex memory game that Columbo encourages its viewers to play thus seems designed not only to hone attentive skills, but equally to ensure that attention deficit is minimised. Viewers must learn to be excellent attentive labourers.
Initially the Conclusion explores the toll which the rigours of attentive labour take on Columbo’s mental health, and how he creates a work/life balance. Later it suggests a positive concluding interpretation of Columbo, via comparison with The Purge, as the upholder of the democratic right of all to life. Overall, though, it teases out the ambivalence of Columbo (Columbo as both good guy and bad guy). Columbo may protect the veracity of history to provide a baseline right to a citizen’s life equally for all, but he does so at great cost to his own health, and in a society in which some citizen’s lives are – to coin the Orwellian phrase – more equal than others.
French Ozon / Global Ozon: French Specificity and Globalisation in Jeune & jolie
Authors: Chaplin Felicity
Published: May 2022

This chapter anchors its analysis of the 2013 feature within the frame of French cinema, culture and traditions. The piece argues that Jeune & Jolie/Young & Beautiful occupies an interstitial space between French specificity and globalisation. Drawing on a rich scholarship, including the work of Ginette Vincendeau, Alistair Fox, Kate Ince and Frederic Jameson, this chapter provides a close reading of Ozon’s style and use of pastiche (also discussed later by Handyside) and confirms that his characters are at once French and postmodern.
Transing Dynamics: Ozon’s Une Nouvelle amie (2014)
Authors: Reeser Todd W.
Published: May 2022

This chapter analyses family dynamics, in this instance through the lens of a transgender character, and draws on Jean Baudrillard’s work, not to take a position on his conceptualisation of ‘transsexuality’ per se, but rather to consider how Une nouvelle amie/The New Girlfriend (2014) bridges conflicting conceptions of gender. It seems that Ozon’s film is representative of the French intellectual tradition of signifying play as defined by Baudrillard and tells the story about the phenomenon of the seduction of ‘transsexuality’, literally and metaphorically.
Introduction: Reality and Speculation
Authors: Bensusan Hilan
Published: May 2022

The Introduction discusses Speculative Realism and briefly presents indexicalism and what lies ahead in the book. Indexicalism is presented as a form of realism – a realism mostly about the others, and, as a consequence, about the Great Outdoors. It places, nevertheless, speculation on the side of a quest for totality that indexicalism aims to reject. The possibility of a deictic speculation is presented as a form to introduce the paradoxical ingredients in indexicalism. The crucial element in common between most forms of Speculative Realism and indexicalism is a commitment to transcendence in the form of opaqueness – or failure in transparency. That commitment contrasts with most of late 20th century emphasis on immanence and on an image of reality as inherently creative requiring no absolute exterior. Indexicalism, on the other hand, posits reality as being incomplete and therefore haunted by the Outdoors.
Fear of the Happy Ending: The Color Purple , Reading and Racism
Authors: Light Alison
Published: May 2022

Based on teaching an adult education class in 1986, this piece raises questions about the ways in which white readers read work by black authors without their necessarily understanding the political and cultural contexts which have produced the work. Alice Walker’s bestseller is the case in point; how can these readings be understood within the history and formation of racialised subjectivities? The importance of the utopian as a mobilising force in cultural politics is then discussed.
The Vampire and the Dog: Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest
Authors: Light Alison
Published: May 2022

A review essay discussing Churchill’s play in 1991 which represented the collapse of communism in Romania as in part a kind of de-repression, allowing wild forces to surface in society. Written as political events evolved, the play tried to connect political turmoil with psychic tumult, the overthrow of repressive regimes as producing an inner world turned upside-down.
The essay asks whether we can hold on to political idealism in the contemporary world where individualism appears to have triumphed.
Writing the Lives of ‘Common People’: Reflections on the Idea of Obscurity
Authors: Light Alison
Published: May 2022

Using Virginia Woolf’s notion of obscurity, this piece explores the questions posed by writing about people who are relatively unknown. How do we shape lives in writing and how do we play with time in writing a life narrative? It takes the life of one woman and looks at the various ways in which her life might be written, with different emphases on different periods in the life. It also discusses the tension between the singular and the representative in writing lives; the question of collective memory and of a politics or cultural outlook which does not believe in ‘the self’, the limits of European or Western emphases on individuality, with childhood at its core. The discussion is also part of the author’s own grappling with writing a memoir of her marriage and offers further reflections on writing family history as part of national history.
Defending Ayyubid Aleppo: The Fortifications of Al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī (1186–1216)
Authors: Tabbaa Yasser
Published: May 2022

Presents a short survey of the various citadels and fortresses erected or rebuilt by al-Zahir Ghazi in his efforts to create protective outposts to his capital city. The article discovers a certain modularity in the overall form, entry blocks, and palaces of these fortresses.
The Politics of Patronage in Medieval Mosul: Nūr al-Dīn, Badr al-Dīn and the Question of the Sunnī Revival
Authors: Tabbaa Yasser
Published: May 2022

This article examines the architectural patronage of Nur al-Din (1146-74) and Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ (1234-59) in Mosul within the context of their contrasting religious and sectarian policies. Nur al-Din’s strict Sunnism and opposition to Shi’ism and Christianity and Badr al-Din’s embrace of Shi’ism and support for local Christians help explain their quite distinctive architectural patronage while expanding the parameters and polarities of the Sunni Revival.
Ecologies of Architecture
Authors: Radman Andrej , Braidotti Rosi
Published: May 2022

The book stages an architectural encounter between affordance theory, affect theory and process-oriented philosophy. Why Ecologies of Architecture, instead of just Architecture? Why territorialisation? To be worthy of the event. To speak of ecology is to uphold irreducibility, embrace non-entailment and thus make sense. Sense does not come ready-made. Sense making is a matter of ‘technicity’ in Simondonian terms: a force of psychosocial invention and cultural transformation. In a desperate attempt to catch up with forms of contemporary media culture, architects tend to perpetuate earlier notions of culture as representation rather than culture as modes of existence. Architecture has yet to break with culture as reflection still firmly embedded in its parochial concepts. When a society manipulates its matter it is not a reflection of culture, it is culture. To speak of the ecologies of architecture is to break with judgement for experience. Experimentation comes before interpretation. If to think differently we have to feel differently then the design of built environment has no other purpose but to transform us. It qualifies as a major psychotropic practice. While engineering is solution-oriented, architecture stays with the problem so as to tease out a creative potential. After all, problems always get the solution they ‘deserve’.
Introduction:
Authors: Radman Andrej
Published: May 2022

As Gilles Deleuze put it, the opposite of the concrete is not the abstract. It is the discrete, and so is the digital by definition. To reduce architecture to its ontic (manifest and calculable) effect is to deprive it of its real-yet-incorporeal pathic affect. They are two unequal and irreducible co-constitutive ‘halves’: the actual properties and the virtual capacities. To paraphrase Gregory Bateson, remaining committed to ‘architecture proper’ is analogous to studying the anatomy of half a chicken – it makes no sense.
4 Sensibility is Ground Zero: On Inclusive Disjunction and Politics of Defatalisation
Authors: Radman Andrej
Published: May 2022

The chapter endeavours to rebut a long-standing philosophical and psychoanalytic tradition of inscribing the subject as primarily grounded in thought or language. As such, the fetishist self-identical subject is deluded into being the epicentre of various experiences and understandings, separate from the constellation of intensities that it undergoes.
The Royal Faculty
Authors: Cross D. J. S.
Published: May 2022

While commentators regularly underappreciate or outright dismiss it, the doctrine of faculties in Difference and Repetition is indispensable to Deleuze’s philosophy of difference because, according to Deleuze, the philosopher must grasp difference through the faculties. On the one hand, Deleuze privileges sensibility as the first faculty to grasp difference; the remaining faculties (imagination, memory, thinking) grasp difference only after and thanks to sensibility. On the other hand, sensibility is essentially unreliable because it also tends to cancel or nullify (annuler) the difference it grasps. Because philosophy doesn’t rigorously begin until we think difference, sensibility jeopardises philosophy as a whole before it ever begins. I call the sensible a hitch because, accordingly, it both anchors philosophy and hobbles philosophy, which leads Deleuze to treat sensibility with ambivalence from the very moment he begins ‘to do’ it.
Furtive Contemplations
Authors: Cross D. J. S.
Published: May 2022

Chapter 2 addresses Deleuze’s complex inheritance of David Hume’s concept of ‘contemplation’. In general, the concept gives Deleuze the resources to argue that sensibility is more originary than the idea of the ‘self’. Accordingly, Deleuze mobilises contemplation as the first step toward the ‘dissolution’ of the self in Difference and Repetition. Only a first step, however, because contemplation still traffics in the idea of the self that hinders a proper concept of difference. The result, once again, is a systematic ambivalence according to which Deleuze both praises and scorns sensibility for one and the same reason. As the most enduring of his arsenal, the concept of contemplation reveals that Deleuze’s ambivalence runs uninterrupted from his first intervention in the history of philosophy in Empiricism and Subjectivity (1955), through his first attempts to do his own philosophy in Difference and Repetition (1968), to the moment he finally defines the philosophy he did throughout his life in What Is Philosophy? (1991).
Biopolitics After Truth
Authors: Prozorov Sergei
Published: May 2022

The rise of post-truth politics marks the most serious crisis of Western liberal democracy since the end of the Cold War. The decline of trust in expert knowledge and mainstream media, the rise of social media devoid of a gatekeeping function and the growth of covert external interference in electoral processes have led to fragmentation, polarization and destabilization of Western democratic systems. What makes post-truth politics so difficult to resist is its apparently democratic character that claims to challenge bureaucratic depoliticization, the rule of experts and the disappearance of alternatives to the hegemonic policy. Biopolitics after Truth refutes this interpretation both historically and conceptually, arguing that by reducing every statement to an opinion equivalent to any other the post-truth ideology leads to the degradation of the public sphere that is essential to democratic governance. Rather than enable resistance to expertise-based biopolitical governmentalities, truth denialism dissolves the only framework where their contestation and transformation could take place. In contrast, Biopolitics after Truth argues for a positive role of truth-telling in the democratization of biopolitical governance. Drawing on Foucault’s late work on truth and subjectivity, it develops an approach to truth-telling as a disruptive speech act that constitutes a political form of life.
Coda: On error
Authors: Prozorov Sergei
Published: May 2022

What comes after truth? It can only be error. Truth liberates the possibility of error, which is entirely foreclosed from the regime of opinions. ‘There can be no wrong opinion’ – what a stifling and even suffocating statement this is! What could be more oppressive than this impossibility of ever being wrong? How can anything significant exist in the absence of the possibility of error? It is precisely because no possibility of error is accepted that opinions are so uninteresting and their exchange is nothing more than idle talk, whose contents are forgotten as soon as they are enunciated....
Despite Straight Lines: Josef Albers, Concrete Poetry and Temporal Relations
Authors: Broqua Vincent
Published: May 2022

This article delves into the relations between the avant-garde artist and poet Josef Albers (1888-1976) and a generation of neo-avant-garde concrete poets, among whom the Bolivian-Swiss poet Eugen Gomringer (b. 1925). It argues that contrary to what the prefix ‘neo’ may suggest, a straight line of influence does not account thoroughly for the diverse relations between avant-garde artists and neo-avant-garde creators. Based on close readings, new archival material as well as interpersonal relations, the case study of Albers and Gomringer shows that the retroaction of the younger generation on an avant-garde artist is as important as claims by the concrete poets of a debt to the avant-garde. The article thus seeks to theorize temporal relations via a specific case study.
A Third Term? Avant-Garde on the Fence in France Since the 1990s
Authors: Barda Jeff
Published: May 2022

This article examines how since the 1990s, French poetic practice has maintained an ambivalent and conflicted relationship with the avant-gardes. It explores the commonalities and differences with past models as well as new forms of praxis. The contribution questions the terms and consequences of these engagements, showing how those practices construct a new literary imaginary that invites us to reflect on issues related to temporality, causality, narrativity and creative freedom, poetics and praxis. It concludes on the issue of temporality as key element to situate the work of the recent French avant-garde within the history of the avant-gardes.
The Austrian Post-War Anomaly: Konrad Bayer’s Montage the head of vitus bering and the Category of the ‘New’
Authors: Innerhofer Roland
Published: May 2022

Konrad Bayer's montage ‘the head of vitus bering,’ published posthumously in 1965, is a modern, neo-avant-garde text in that it is based on the primacy of the constructive over the genealogical paradigm. At the same time, the literary play with found materials and with established genres such as the biography and the travelogue can be considered postmodern. Yet, postmodern aesthetics and eclectic pluralism are undermined by an obsession with violence and boundary transgression. This obsession can be understood as an aggressive reaction to the suppression and tabooing of the traumatic experiences of World War II and of the Shoah in post-war Austria. The process of destruction performed in the text is not limited to semantics, but extends to the narrative continuum, grammatical structures and individual words. In contrast to postmodernism, the categories of the new and the original are not dismissed, but emerge from the vehemence of negation.
Surrealism in Post-War Vienna
Authors: Tezarek Laura , Zolles Christian
Published: May 2022

Owing to its fundamental lack of national esteem and slim prospects after the First World War and the end of the multi-ethnic Habsburg monarchy, there was a significant delay in the historical avant-garde reaching Austria. During the Nazi regime, ‘avant-gardist’ art and literature had not been available in Austria, which also led to a later lack of clarity in regard to what could be considered ‘surrealist writing’. For a young generation of progressive artists and writers in Vienna at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, among them the poet Andreas Okopenko, surrealism became a much-discussed topic. Confronted with its intoxicating and anarchic energies for the first time, those artists perceived surrealism as an opportunity to radically break with the predominantly conservative literature of the last decades. Paradoxically, the radical questioning of traditions through the reception of international experimental arts would subsequently provide a significant contribution to the strengthening of a national identity, by forming an Austrian counterculture.
A Brief History of Schizoanalysis
Authors: Buchanan Ian
Published: May 2022

This chapter traces the origins of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of schizoanalysis. It starts with a discussion of how and why Deleuze and Guattari met, paying particular attention to their mutual interest in the nature of schizophrenia. It then shows how schizoanalysis evolved in response to what Deleuze and Guattari perceived to be the critical limitations of psychoanalysis, particularly its understanding of schizophrenia. Lastly, it shows how the concept of the assemblage is the centrepiece of schizoanalysis as a critical methodology.
Symptomatology and Racial Politics in Australia
Authors: Buchanan Ian
Published: May 2022

This chapter does two things: first, it speculates that Deleuze’s idea of a symptomatology derived from literary works could be extended to include cinema and culture more generally; second, it proposes to use symptomatology to analyse the 2006 Australian film Jindabyne directed by Ray Lawrence. Based on the Raymond Carver short story ‘So much water, so close to home’ in which a group of men on a fishing weekend discover the body of a dead woman in the river and instead of reporting it carry on fishing, Jindabyne transposes it to an Australian setting and uses the tale as the basis for an allegory about race relations in Australia. The chapter argues that the film can be understood as a commentary on the national apology the Australian Prime Minister made to the Indigenous peoples of Australia.
Treatise on Militarism
Authors: Buchanan Ian
Published: May 2022

Written in the early days of the so-called ‘war on terror’ when it was abundantly apparent that the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were horrific failures that had cost the lives of thousands of people and would cost the lives of thousands more, this chapter asks what – if anything – Deleuze and Guattari’s work might enable us to say about contemporary forms of militarism. It mobilises Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the war machine to critique the ideological underpinnings of the ‘war on terror’. It then proposes a series of axioms that can help us to conceptualise the nature of war today as it is waged by the great imperial powers.
Space in the Age of Non-Place
Authors: Buchanan Ian
Published: May 2022

This chapter investigates the affective difference between traditional places and so-called postmodern places, or what is sometimes known as non-places. It argues that the postmodern places, such as museums, theme parks, and casinos, can be understood as deterritorialized versions of traditional places. It pays particular attention to the effect of automobiles on city planning and the feeling of living in certain cities such as Las Vegas that are dominated by cars.
Architecture and Control Society
Authors: Buchanan Ian
Published: May 2022

This chapter speculates about the changes to architecture that have occurred in the transition from Foucault’s ‘disciplinary society’ to Deleuze’s ‘control society’. Focusing on the social transformations that have followed the introduction and proliferation of digital technology, this chapter proposes that there are four distinctive architectural forms that characterise the era we know as control society: the mall, the theme park, the cloud, and the camp.
Deleuze and ‘Life’
Authors: Buchanan Ian
Published: May 2022

This chapter challenges Giorgio Agamben’s claim that Deleuze’s final published work in his lifetime, a short essay entitled ‘Immanence: A life …”, should be regarded as his intellectual legacy. Agamben claims that this essay is Deleuze great unfinished project and that it sums up his philosophical project as a whole. This chapter rejects this claim on several fronts, including the idea that ‘Immanence: A life …” can be considered to be Deleuze’s intellectual last will and testament as Agamben suggests it should be. The chapter then offers an alternative reading of ‘Immanence: A life …” by returning to the passage Deleuze quotes from Dickens.
The Fold of Number
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: May 2022

This chapter describes how such indeterminate processes can become quantitatively distinct from one another and conjoin to produce larger composite objects. It shows how objects emerge when flows of matter fold or cycle into metastable patterns. These folding patterns create qualities where they intersect with themselves and quantities or “number,” where they trace a spatial and temporal loop. Instead of thinking about number and quantity as an arbitrary mental construction unique to humans or eternal Platonic form, there is an attempt to offer a compelling materialist alternative based on movement. Finally, a description as to how these cycles of folding could weave together to create the metastable composites we refer to as sensible things in the world.
The Field of Knowledge
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: May 2022

In this chapter, a description is given of the basic kinetic structure of how human knowledge works through metastable patterns of iteration and circulation. They are called “fields.” Objects, in view, are not static, and neither is their order. Instead, provided is a process-philosophy of objects and their relations as material and metastable processes. This non-anthropocentric approach involves expanding our typical definitions of number, knowledge, and observation with significant consequences for how we think about human scientific practice. The history of science is one expression of material history and not a representation of it.
The Ancient Object I
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: May 2022

This chapter and the next argue that several ancient sciences created cardinal objects using centrifugal motions. Specifically, this chapter shows how cardinal objects developed out of four ancient scientific practices: the use of numerals, accounting, measurement, and logic. It focuses on the invention of numerals and the use of ancient accounting practices. It also shows how each of these four practices moves through four similar stages of increasing abstraction. Along with the way that each of these scientific practices moves through these shared stages and motions in its own way. There was not a linear sequence in which one method derived its cardinal objects from another. The practices emerge, then disappear, then reappear somewhere else differently. The emergence of increasingly abstract cardinal objects seemed to work more by resonance than by progressive causality and direct influence. It’s more like when a person strikes a key on a piano in a piano shop, and all the pianos begin to resonate than like knocking over a series of dominos. Another important note is that the rising dominance of cardinal objects in the ancient world did not mean that ordinal objects and their patterns disappeared. Instead, they became absorbed and transformed.
The Contemporary Object III: Chaos Theory
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: May 2022

This chapter discusses the third contribution to the loop theory of the object that emerged in the 1970s with the study of nonlinear and complex dynamical systems, or “chaos theory.” Chaos theory showed that tiny differences in the initial conditions of how an object began moving or how someone measured it could create widely diverging outputs over time. Each object seems to follow a unique evolution that renders its precise prediction impossible. This chapter proposes an indeterministic interpretation of chaos theory. Some chaos theory interpretations say that there is an objective set of initial conditions, but we can’t know them. However, this chapter explains that we cannot know the precise initial conditions of any object in principle, due in part to quantum indeterminacy and entanglement. Chaos theory teaches us that each object has a singular trajectory that we cannot know in advance but tends to produce dynamic patterns over time. Studying these patterns of motion across different macroscopic scales can help us understand physical systems’ common features. This chapter shows that interpreting kinetic indeterminacy at the heart of the initial conditions of things is entirely consistent with and even beneficial for chaos theory.
Modern Sovereign State Building in the Gulf: From the 1950s to the 1970s
Authors: Baskan Birol
Published: May 2022

This chapter discusses the first phase of modern state building in the Gulf, which lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s. The chapter first examines Gulf rulers’ state building efforts in the pre-oil period, which were limited in scope and depth. The chapter then details Gulf rulers’ state building efforts in the oil period, focusing on two fields historically occupied by religious scholars, justice and education. This chapter aims to show that the Gulf states had not undergone any forceful state secularization: on the contrary, they relied on religion and religious figures in building their educational and judicial systems as much as possible. The chapter also shows that Saudi Arabia had been more religious than others in pursuing the same aim.
The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music
Authors: Otterbeck Jonas
Published: May 2022

Awakening – an Islamic media company formed in London – has created the soundtrack to many Muslim lives during the last two decades and has produced superstars like Sami Yusuf and Maher Zain, among a host of other artists. As the company celebrates its first 20 years in the industry, the book examines Awakening’s rise to global success and their pop music inspired by Islam.
Providing the first thorough description of the history and development of new Islamic popular music genres, in particular pop-nashid and Islamic pop, this book argues that Awakening is best understood in relation to the ethical turn in Islamic thinking. In analysing the turn to ethics, the book explores how the Islamic pop industry is, in effect, altering the very formulations of Islamic thought. Closely examining the ethical masculinity of the Awakening artists, alongside their personas in songs, on stage and via social media, the book analyses how popular culture and the creative arts challenge and help change Islamic (re)thinking.
The author has been on tour with Awakening artists, analysed the media output by the company and interviewed artists, the Awakening founders, video directors and other key people in the business.
The Message and its Media
Authors: Otterbeck Jonas
Published: May 2022

Chapter five analyses the messages of Awakening through detailed studies of the lyrics, the instrumentation and production of Awakening songs. First, it identifies four recurrent themes of the lyrics (praising Allah, Muhammad, spiritual awakening, love) and then discusses other topics addressed such as political freedom in authoritarian states. The overall impression is that lyrics are rather straight-forward and devout including little or no ambiguity. When lyrics are drawing from, for example, Urdu or Arabic they tend to relate to a much larger established poetic discourse then when written in English where an Islamic poetic language is not as established. Lyrics are carefully crafted and checked by several people to make sure the company and the artists can stand by them, especially regarding the representations of religious matters. Further, the chapter discusses instrumentation, production and sounds to try to answer what an Islamic sounding production might be. Production choices are interlaced with tastes and preferences established by the pioneers written about in chapter four, Islamic ethical debates but also by consumer culture ideals and technological developments in digital production. The chapter looks closely into the preference among some to record vocals-only, and discusses what the sound of guitars imply.
Performing an Ethical Islamic Masculinity
Authors: Otterbeck Jonas
Published: May 2022

Chapter six focuses on the artists’ need to create and control a masculine, ethical Islamic persona to come across as authentically devout. They have to do this in a consumer culture fixated by celebrity culture and the market value of handsome artists. The chapter discusses the sexualisation of artists and the strategies of Awakening and its artists over time deal with this. The growth of interactive social media around 2014 causes a change in marketing and communication between artists and fans. The chapter uses that as a dividing line and describes the strategies before and after giving examples from, among others, Harris J and Sami Yusuf and Maher Zain. The major difference is that with the less regulated communication that followed with social media, Awakening has allowed for more fun and spontaneity in the marketing of its artists. Before 2014, the male artists were very solemn and clearly marketed in a way meant to contrast dominant popular music strategies. This change has appeared in tandem with the confidence that has come with success. The chapter ends with a discussion about possible future female artists signed to Awakening.
Carefully Pushing Ahead
Authors: Otterbeck Jonas
Published: May 2022

Chapter eight offers an overall analysis of the research. It especially discusses questions about what activities like Awakening’s mean to the contemporary formulation of Islam. It discusses how Awakening actively relates to Islamic authorities without submitting to their judgement. Rather, Islamic authorities are positioned as discussion partners to maintain independence and the creative initiative. A conclusion is that this allows Awakening to carefully push ahead and over time move the goal posts for the possible. The chapter further revisits the discussion about an ethical masculinity connecting the importance of ethics to a general ethical turn in contemporary Islamic theology manifested in a discourse on maqasid al-sharia, the reasons behind sharia rulings. Awakening has a track-record of being a pioneering company; not being able yet to launch a female artist bother them. To Awakening, such a launch is riddled with Islamic ethical norms. They have tried, but as of now failed. The chapter ends with a speculation about the legacy of Awakening.
Islamic Discourses on Popular Music: A Historical Footnote
Authors: Otterbeck Jonas
Published: May 2022

Chapter nine tackles the historical normative discussion about how Islam should relate to music. However, the approach is new as this historical footnote particularly focuses on popular music. Popular music is emphasised as three different domains. The music of people, the music of taverns by professional entertainers of the people, and then, eventually, the popular music marketed for mass consumption. The chapter focuses on the first two aspects as the discussion of mass consumption music is covered in chapter four. To make sense of the many diverging opinions preserved in historical texts, the chapter divides discourse into four positions: the writings of i) the philosophers ii) court intellectuals iii) Sufis and iv) legal scholars. By analysing the internal logic of respective position, the diversity of opinions is explained. In the chapter, the thoughts of the likes of al-Farabi (d. 950), ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi (d. 940), al-Ghazzali (d. 1111), and ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894) are discussed.
A Philosophy of Practising
Authors: Pont Antonia
Published: May 2022

This book shows us how to identify when practising is happening and explains, using the early philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, how it fosters transformation, and gives us access to deep memory and rest, while also cultivating stability and responsiveness in the present. Practising, in other words, gives us three kinds of time instead of one Practising involves an interweaving of differences expressing themselves among intentional repetitions. By engaging in practising, we open times other than our habitual presents, we slip the binds of identity and we thin out our relation to behaviours that shut out the future. Rather than being about a rehearsal, or ‘getting something done’, practising constitutes the conditions for radical but sustainable experimentation in relation to self, shared futures, change and time itself. The book provides a useful framework of four criteria that may assist in clarifying when practising (rather than habit) is in play. A close analysis of the basic form of Zen practice (‘zazen’ or shikantaza) as well as yoga and other creative arts as examples are explored in order to derive the minimal aspects that mark practising, and as the latter pertains to repetitions that can stabilise—as well as welcome—unanticipated change. Following Deleuze’s three syntheses of time in Difference and Repetition, as well as Bergson’s notions of a pure past, and Nietzsche’s pure empty future and the experiment of the eternal return, the book argues that transformation is not predicated on destruction, but more often on relaxation, and a cultivated stance in relation to repetition and the new.
Introduction
Authors: Pont Antonia
Published: May 2022

This chapter offers a summary definition of practising, alongside an introduction to the relevance of Deleuze’s conceptual work in Difference and Repetition for the task of ‘saying practising better’. Practising will emerge as a ‘how’ which can pertain to many modes of ‘doing’, and which tends to engender a combination of stability along with a facility to transform or change. That is, practising includes habit but is not reduced to it alone, and may evade its less-expansive aspects. Practising’s four criteria are introduced which will structure the chapters to follow.
Repeating Repetition: Practising with the Future
Authors: Pont Antonia
Published: May 2022

This chapter focuses on the fourth criterion of practising and its resonance with the third synthesis of time in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Where the other syntheses relate to the living present and the past respectively, this final synthesis aligns with Nietzschean offerings pertaining to the pure and empty future, that is: to unanticipated futurity and to transformation. It recaps earlier arguments to assist the reader to locate themselves in this final criterion, with a table organising the conceptual work thus far provided. The chapter approaches the idea of the Eternal Return as Deleuze has read it, after Nietzsche, proposing that practising generates a kind of mode of the Übermensch, which is here read as no strict case or instance, but rather as a potential of living in the world intentionally but with less insistence on identity. Overall, the chapter offers an understanding of how the mechanisms of difference and repetition can operate in such a way as to eschew identity, without forgoing stability, and thus how transformation, subtracted from destructive modes, might be thinkable and courted.
Afterword
Authors: Pont Antonia
Published: May 2022

The afterword offers a short account of the conditions under which the book was drafted, and the use of practising, with its deploying of a structured and relaxed approach, to generate work and thought about practising.
Conceptual and Theoretical Framework
Authors: Sofie Schøtt Anne
Published: May 2022

This chapter presents the conceptual and theoretical framework of the book. It places the study within the field of Kurdish Diaspora Studies, which has emerged as a sub-discipline to Kurdish Studies. The chapter draws on the field of Diaspora Studies discussing the concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’ to create a conceptual base for the analysis of the Kurdish diaspora in Denmark. The chapter also draws on social movement theory, as diaspora is perceived as a mobilised and mobilising actor. Doing so, the chapter introduces strategic interactionism to the study of diaspora mobilisation, which perceives players as ‘those who engage in strategic action with some goal in mind’, recognising the ambiguity and complexity of social interaction. Finally, identity formation as the outcome of interaction is also explained.
The Castle and the Square: Political Lobbyism
Authors: Sofie Schøtt Anne
Published: May 2022

This chapter investigates the political lobbyism of the Kurdish diaspora in Denmark. Following the Kurdish activists into the ‘square’ and the ‘castle’, which constitute the main arenas of political activism, the chapter uncovers the strategies of the Kurdish activists to raise awareness of the Kurdish cause. To reach the political decision-makers directly, the Kurds seek access to the castle of Christiansborg, which hosts the Danish parliament. As a parallel strategy, the Kurds take the Kurdish cause to the streets and squares to catch the attention of the public. The chapter identifies the main actors among the Danish politicians with whom the Kurds interact and analyses the ambiguous outcome of interaction. The chapter also analyses the rivalry between the two main Kurdish diaspora movements and suggests four determinants for success. Finally, the chapter discusses how engaging in Kurdish lobbyism changed how to identify as a Kurds in Denmark.