this is the first lecture in the series here is the link to rest of series
Manuel De Landa. Immanent Patterns of Becoming. 2009 1/14
These lectures I think provides narratives of patterns of becoming in Henri Poinacaré and Gilles Deleuze that may have an Aurobindonian trajectory, as well. In this extraordinary lecture series Manuel DeLanda provides a lucid narrative of the history of non-linear dynamics (complexity theory) and its intrinsic relationship to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. By the third lecture in this series we learn the impact of Bergson on Deleuze, and why even if the analytic school of Anglo-American philosophy unjustly dismisses Derrida, Layotard, and Lacan they can never ignore Deleuze, who was thirty years ahead of them in incorporating complexity, self-organization, and emergence in his philosophy of immanent (spiritual) materialism. For anyone who wants an introduction to complexity theory and/or the philosophy of Deleuze there is no better place than in the work of DeLanda and specifically in this lecture series. al..
Manuel De Landa is, among other roles, a philosopher, media theorist, film maker, and artist. As these, he has inhabited and lived between the intersections of thinking and creativity, uncovering the interstices which link historically separate autonomous fields to each other. Beginning in the late 1970s in New York where he produced a number of underground 8 and 16 mm films, De Landa has been at the forefront of creative thinking, working at the outer edges of media theory and incorporating the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari into his ideas. Manuel De Landa holds the Gilles Deleuze Chair of Contemporary Philosophy at the European Graduate School as well as teaching at Columbia University, the University of Philadelphia and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
De Landas close reading of Deleuze and Guattari, and more importantly his continuation or extension of their ideas, sees the creative potential of philosophy in a new materialism. In his writing he seeks to expand on the notion of a total unity, through assemblage, of multiple singularities. His work focuses on the idea that our rational view of the world in stable, solid structures is at best limited; instead he seeks clarification through the concept of liquidity, in which the liquid structures, constantly on the verge of chaos, have the greatest potential for creation. De Landa rejects viewing the world through a solely anthropocentric perspective and instead gains insight through an insistence on viewing nature from a non-anthropocentrically hierarchised environment. In this liquidity, De Landa see the power to self-organize and further, the ability to form an ethics of sorts, one untouched by human static control, and which allows an existence at the edge of creative, flowing chaos.
This unique vision comes to the fore in De Landas A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, in which he analyses history as a confluence of infinite variation, a flow of dynamic processes without rational, or traditional, order. De Landa sees in his history instead a revived form of materialism, liberated from the dogmas of the past. The history then presented is one of flowing articulations rather than one conducted along a linear, static construction. Moving beyond a concept of binary oppositions, De Landa instead sees a past of infinite bifurcations, a flowing, liquid unfolding which exposes a collective identity from a myriad of points and perspectives.
Manuel De Landa has written and published extensively since the early 1990s. His published work includes War In the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (2000), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2005), and most recently A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (2006).
Not only does one get a clear exposition of non-linear dynamics, phase space, strange attractors etc from this lecture series but by the 8th lecture one encounters the plane of immanence (sometimes called the plane of consistency of body without organs) Deleuze’s immanent plane of spirituality that DeLande describes as a field of infinite potentiality which contains all possible phase space -degrees of freedom- in the universe. Its a description while not quite identical to, certainly has striking resemblances to Sri Aurobindo’s Real-Idea (aka Supermind)
In lecture 13 DeLanda describes in lucid detail how one might access this plane of immanence and surprise, surprise he favors the path of yoga. (although one that travels a critical path and avoids the traditional theology associated with surrender to a particular guru such as the Dalai Lama)
At any rate my belief in the possibility of a fruitful reconstructive dialog between theorist of Deleuze and/or other similar figures in recent critical philosophy and those who also follow critical intellectual paths yet partake in systems of experiential spirituality such as Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, has just been reconfirmed.
I was wondering how to incorporate the De Landian notion of non-linearity with Hassan Khalil’s linearization as a localized phenomenon at an observance point and thereafter, as the distance would increase, this linearization melting into non-linearity. This lecture has indeed proved handy, but would much appreciate, if some light could be shed on the problem at hand.
thank you.
himanshu
I am not sure DeLanda speaks to this specific issue you raise -which seems to me if I understand it correctly – as having something to do with sensitivity to initial conditions- but perhaps if you wade through his other lecture on EGS, from a series of seminars he did over several days, you might find something of use in what he says -following Deleuze- about the crystalization of an entity within a field of raw intensities. A process that not only is applicable to producing material entities but is also at work psychologically in the process of ego formation. Or what also might be of interest is how Deleuze envisions processes that produce entities without essences.
Regards Deleuze its hard to find a better commentary on his philosophy then the entire series of lectures DeLanda gave at EGS in 2009. One interesting aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy that DeLanda points to is that in the world of 20th century philosophers almost every single major philosopher traces their lineage back to Kant and idealism (Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida etc), whereas Deleuze’s materialist philosophy is the only one whose genealogy goes in a different direction back to Hume.
Note: One also should not confuse Deleuze’s materialism with reductionism (that he opposed) because it is rooted in the ontology of emergence. In fact with regards to one of the themes of this blog, although Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy may be formally characterized as idealist (with some cross-cultural caveats), there is in fact a materialist aspect to it and its prescribed practices that makes Deleuze’s materialism extremely relevant.
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