| Popis: |
This thesis investigates the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in relation to the direction within contemporary philosophy called “new materialism”, represented here by the American philosophers Karen Barad and Graham Harman. New materialists basically argue that human agency is just a part of the world’s plural agencies, and one must therefore set aside a notion of the human as the only character that matters in itself. In an exploration of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism we argue that Deleuze can be thought of as a precursor of new materialism. Most importantly, Deleuze introduces a new concept of difference by which he argues that every identifying concept is constructed on the basis of a pure difference in itself. The pure difference is, despite its distinctive manifestation in sensation, something obscure in the way that it is impossible to comprehend. To this point, it is argued that—in order to consider Deleuze as a precursor of new materialism—one must expand the concept of the material to include the virtual plane of pure differences and forces as well as the actual differentiated formations through which we know the world. The study concludes that Deleuze’s philosophy of difference brings about a conception of the world as something that is profoundly multiple and indistinguishable, and in this way it challenges any notion of the human as something predominant and delimited from its surroundings. |
