Monday, April 2, 2012

A Deleuzian Century?: Session I

To consider a pure event, it must first be given a metaphysical ba­sis. But we must be agreed that it cannot be the metaphysics of sub­stances, which can serve as a foundation for accidents; nor can it be a metaphysics of coherence, which situates these accidents in the en­tangled nexus of causes and effects. The event-a wound, a victory-defeat, death-is always an effect produced entirely by bodies colliding, mingling, or separating, but this effect is never of a corpo­real nature; it is the intangible, inaccessible battle that turns and re­peats itself a thousand times around Fabricius, above the wounded Prince Andrew. The weapons that tear into bodies form an endless incorporeal battle. Physics concerns causes, but events, which arise as its effects, no longer belong to it Let us imagine a stitched causal­ity: as bodies collide, mingle, and suffer, they create events on their surfaces, events that are without thickness, mixture, or passion; for this reason, they can no longer be causes. They form, among them­selves, another kind of succession whose links derive from a quasi-physics of incorporeals-in short, from metaphysics.

Michel Foucault, Theatrum Philosophicum

Tomorrow, we begin reading Deleuze. All are invited!

Date: 3 April 2012 (Tuesday)
Time: 2.30 pm
Venue: Library, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

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