The Invention of a People: Heidegger and Deleuze on Art and the Political
Janae Sholtz
Abstract
The Invention of a People explores the residual relation between Heidegger’s thought and Deleuze’s novelty. Contextualising the problematic of a people-to-come within a larger political and philosophical context of postwar thinkers of community, the book addresses the impasses resulting from the philosophical prioritization of sameness and identity and casts Deleuze’s project as both an extension and radicalization of the Heideggerian themes of immanence, ontological difference and the transformative potential of art. Through interstitial readings of Paul Klee, Kostos Axelos, Arthur Rimbaud, t ... More
The Invention of a People explores the residual relation between Heidegger’s thought and Deleuze’s novelty. Contextualising the problematic of a people-to-come within a larger political and philosophical context of postwar thinkers of community, the book addresses the impasses resulting from the philosophical prioritization of sameness and identity and casts Deleuze’s project as both an extension and radicalization of the Heideggerian themes of immanence, ontological difference and the transformative potential of art. Through interstitial readings of Paul Klee, Kostos Axelos, Arthur Rimbaud, the 1960’s art collective Fluxus, and contemporary artist Brian Fridge, the book offers creative encounters between Heidegger and Deleuze which act as provocations from the outside, opening new lines of flight and hitherto unthought terrain. A key claim is that to become worthy of the events that befall us, philosophy must move from ontology to a fluxology, which is predicated upon the cultivation of a new sensibility for the affect and immanence. Insisting on the necessary entwinement of the aesthetic and the political, the author develops a diagrammatic image of a people-to-come that is constantly in flux and can answer the demands of the untimely future.
Keywords:
Deleuze,
Heidegger,
ontology,
affect,
people-to-come,
earth,
cosmic,
invention,
immanence,
art
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780748685356 |
Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: January 2016 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748685356.001.0001 |