Deleuze and Ethology: A Philosophy of Entangled Life

Description

Ethology, or, how animals relate to their environments is currently enjoying increased academic attention. A prominent figure in this scholarship is Gilles Deleuze and yet, the significance of his relational metaphysics to ethology has still not been scrutinised. Jason Cullen’s book is the first text to analyse Deleuze’s philosophical ethology and he prioritises the theorist’s examination of how beings relate to each other. For Cullen, Deleuze’s Cinema books are integral to this investigation and he highlights how they expose a key Deleuzian theme: that beings are fundamentally continuous with each other. In light of this continuity then, Cullen reveals that how beings understand each other shapes them and allows them to transform their shared worlds. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Preface and acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1: The problem: An ethology of sense Introduction Ethology Uexküll and the functional circle Hegel, Hyppolite and Deleuze: Difference and sense Semiotics Making sense: The simultaneity of a virtual whole and its actual parts Conclusion: Sense and the formulation of problems Chapter 2: On Deleuze’s Spinozism: Expression and sense-making in the logic of holism Univocity Immanence Attribution, distinction and the constitution of substance Attribution and the production of the modes Modification as the expression of power Conclusion Chapter 3: On Deleuze’s Bergson: The transformation of the whole Deleuze’s Nietzschean critique of Spinoza Bergson’s critique of the possible and the real and the genesis of novelty The dialectic of problems: The virtual and actualization Multiplicities The three syntheses of time and correspondence without resemblance Conclusion: Syntheses and the renewal of holism Chapter 4: Images and affect Movement and distinction Images and representation The movement-image and its avatars Perception and action, problems and solutions Affection and the reciprocal presupposition of individuals and the whole Conclusion Chapter 5: Subjectivity, experimentation beyond the action-image and an ‘art of living’ Resisting the privilege of a human point of view: Bergsonism contra phenomenology Bipolar perceptions: Analysis, description and semisubjectivity Framing and the determination of problems Memory, perception and temporal series Signs and the differentiation of the image On the failure of the sensory-motor schema and an art of living Conclusion: The breakdown of the sensory-motor schema and experimentation Conclusion Immanence and expression between causality and determination Towards a Deleuzian ethology Notes Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Conclusion Bibliography Index