Deleuze and Guattari's Immanent Ethics: Theory, Subjectivity, and Duration (SUNY series in Gender Theory)

In Deleuze and Guattari's Immanent Ethics , Tamsin Lorraine focuses on the pragmatic implications of Deleuze and Guattari's work for human beings struggling to live ethical lives. Her bold alignment of Deleuze and Guattari's project with the feminist and phenomenological projects of grounding human action in lived experience provides an accessible introduction to their work. Lorraine characterizes Deleuze and Guattari's nonfoundational approach to ethics in terms of a notion of power that comes into skillful confluence with the multiple forces of life and an immanent principle of flourishing, while their conception of philosophical thought is portrayed as an intervention in the ongoing movement of life that she enacts in her own exploration of their ideas. She contends that Deleuze and Guattari advocate unfolding the potential of our becoming in ways that enhance our participation in the creative evolution of life, and she characterizes forms of subjectivity and cultural practice that could support such evolution. By means of her lucid reading taken through the lens of feminist philosophy, Lorraine is not only able to present clearly Deleuze and Guattari's project but also an intriguing elaboration of some of the project's practical implications for novel approaches to contemporary problems in philosophy, feminism, cultural theory, and human living. Chapter 1 Introduction 1 -- Intuition And The Durational Whole 6 -- Theory 12 -- Chapter 2 A Genealogy Of (in)human Existence 31 -- (in)human Genealogy 33 -- Faciality And The Majoritarian Subject 48 -- Chapter 3 Feminist Cartographies And Minoritarian Subjectivity 57 -- Feminist Cartographies 57 -- Minoritarian Subjectivity And The Question Of Identity 66 -- Chapter 4 Bodies, Time, And Intuition 81 -- Intensive Plateaus 83 -- Philosophy, Art, And Intuition 95 -- Becoming-woman And Lines Of Flight 105 -- Chapter 5 Ethics, Trauma, And Counter-memory 115 -- Spinoza's Joy And Nietzsche's Gift-giving Virtue 115 -- Trauma And Counter-memory 130 -- Witnessing New Territories 137 -- Chapter 6 Politics, Subjectivity, And Theory 147 -- Spinozist Ethology 147 -- Minoritarian Subjectivity 154 -- Theory 165 -- Conclusion 168. Tamsin Lorraine. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Lorraine (philosophy, Swarthmore College) has pursued the questions that interest her personally via the series of books written by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Together they tackled the problems of how to be ethical, and how to practice philosophy with a pragmatic conception. After an introduction, five chapters discuss a genealogy of (in)human existence; feminist cartographies and minoritarian subjectivity; bodies, time, and intuition; ethics, trauma, and counter-memory; and politics, subjectivity, and theory. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)