PANDEMIC AND THE QUESTION OF LIFE: Towards a Posthuman Ontology
Book chapter, Pandemic, Event, and the Immanence of Life: Critical Reflections on Covid 19, 2024,
View abstract ⏷
This chapter attempts to tackle the politics and commoditization of life by resorting to a posthuman/nonhuman ontology and multispecies ecology. The paper has three sections – the first deals with the imminent politics of life and the consequences of the new inquiries regarding the threshold of life. In the second section this is further corroborated by the critique of anthropocentrism and the implicit revival of anthropos in the guise of species thinking in the discourse of the Anthropocene. This lays the foundation for a posthuman ontology. The third section focuses on the multiplicity of life by exploring the symbiotic relationships that sustain life and thereby challenging the notion of ‘individual’ and ‘species’ as dominant categories of classification. It attempts to look at symbiosis as a Deleuzo-Guattarian assemblage and argues, following Deleuze and Guattari, that symbiotic relations have always been there in history. Finally, the chapter argues for a posthuman ontology that questions the arborescent model of biology and can address the transversal multispecies connections that affirm the immanence of life withstanding the commoditization of it by venture capital.
INTRODUCTION
Patton P., Manoj N.Y., Saeed S.
Book chapter, Pandemic, Event, and the Immanence of Life: Critical Reflections on Covid 19, 2024,
View abstract ⏷
It is not only the complexity of the pandemic that makes it a problem for thought but also its contradictory character. On many levels, the pandemic confronted us with irreconcilable demands. Preserving the life of the population has long been a primary function of modern government, as has maintaining the social and institutional conditions in which the market economy can flourish. The quarantine measures introduced to control the spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus directly contradicted the needs of the economy. Similarly, the measures introduced to protect the lives of the elderly and those most exposed to the threat of lethal illness were incompatible with the quality of life of the younger and more healthy sections of the population. The spread of disease is at once both an intensely social and public phenomenon and, under quarantine conditions, an intensely personal and private experience. The governmental responses to the pandemic in many cases involved an unprecedented level of intrusion into the everyday lives of citizens, while at the same time the disruption of established patterns of work and social life led to new forms of social engagement and solidarity. These and other tensions at the heart of responses to the pandemic make it an especially forceful provocation to thought.
PANDEMIC, EVENT, AND THE IMMANENCE OF LIFE: Critical Reflections on Covid 19
Manoj N.Y., Saeed S., Patton P.
Book, Pandemic, Event, and the Immanence of Life: Critical Reflections on Covid 19, 2024, DOI Link
View abstract ⏷
This volume reflects on different regional and national experiences of the Covid 19 pandemic, with contributions from India, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Italy, United States, and Canada. This book draws upon a number of approaches but especially the works of Deleuze and Guattari, Agamben, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Latour, and Serres. It looks at the methodological aspects of treating the pandemic, focuses on laying out the posthuman condition of the event largely problematizing the immanence of life which affirms the transversal Deleuzian ethic of life, and extends the politics of life to the domain of immunology. Together, the authors make it apparent that the pandemic is a multifaceted event, or many different kinds of events – virological, informational, phenomenological, social, and discursive. The authors skilfully develop these different dimensions of the pandemic event and show the relations between them. These essays will enrich the reader’s understanding of the pandemic and its effects, while demonstrating the depth and breadth of the resources that humanities scholarship can mobilize to help us understand such phenomena. This volume will be useful to students of posthumanism, medical humanities, health communication, political communication, semiotics, literature, cultural theories, and major strains of thought from contemporary continental philosophy.
The existential territory of Shaheen Bagh: A schizoanalytic cartography
Book chapter, Deleuze, Guattari and the Schizoanalysis of Postmedia, 2023,
Introduction to the special issue on dissent
Bradley J.P.N., Taek-Gwang Lee A., N. Y M.
Editorial, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2023, DOI Link
Deleuze, Guattari and the Schizoanalysis of Postmedia
Bradley J.P.N., Lee A.T.G., Manoj N.Y.
Book, Deleuze, Guattari and the Schizoanalysis of Postmedia, 2023, DOI Link
View abstract ⏷
Is the self or subject discontinuous across technological platforms? Do technological developments increase inequality and exploitation? Is the new media landscape creating a dangerous distraction from the climate crisis? Connecting the work of critical postmedia studies to Deleuze and Guattari's concept of schizoanalysis, this book marks a bifurcatory shift in the radical theory on technology. A range of critical perspectives are explored by international authors who engage with ecology, ecosophy, climate change, the postmedia condition, and the Anthropocene. Answering the above questions, editors Joff P.N. Bradley, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, and Manoj N.Y. frame the volume's chapters as urgent responses to unbridled technological advance and impending climate disaster. Using ecological philosophy as a core focus, the volume analyses new media, technologies of the self, the power of algorithms, and technologies of resistance, to outline a materialist paradigm capable of addressing crises across the cultural, biological, and informational spheres. Through contesting economies built on desire and destruction and questioning the infiltration of capitalism in all of its spheres of negative influence, the editors review recent technological developments in light of Deleuze and Guattari's earlier seminal theories to make bold new connections and critiques in the study of media, philosophy, and the environment.
Gadfly or praying mantis? Three philosophical perspectives on the Delhi student protests
Manoj N.Y., Bradley J.P.N., Taek-Gwang Lee A.
Editorial, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2023, DOI Link
Introduction
Bradley J.P.N., Lee A.T.G., Manoj N.Y.
Editorial, Deleuze, Guattari and the Schizoanalysis of Postmedia, 2023,
Introduction: Deleuze, Guattari, and the invention of the ‘Indian diagram’
Editorial, Deleuze, Guattari and India: Exploring a Post-Postcolonial Multiplicity, 2021, DOI Link
View abstract ⏷
Diagram is a resourceful concept in Deleuze that can be usefully applied in the analysis of different historical formations and cultural strata. It stands for a schemata or abstract machine that is found to be actualised in diverse domains and multiplicities with characteristic differences. It is a piece of virtual technology that can be detached from any specific instance and applied to another one with equal efficacy and validity. Perhaps the most important instantiation is Foucault’s disciplinary diagram, famously known as the Panopticon, which began with the prison and later percolated into different multiplicities such as schools, factories, military, asylum, and so on. It is argued in this chapter that caste is such a diagram in the case of India, which becomes functional in diverse sites and conjunctures with characteristic variations. Two diagrammatic variations of Brahminism, one relating to Tamil brahmins and another one drawn from the Visvakarma caste of Kerala, are examined in detail.
Deleuze, Guattari and India: Exploring a post-postcolonial multiplicity
Buchanan I., George Varghese K., Manoj N.Y.
Book, Deleuze, Guattari and India: Exploring a Post-Postcolonial Multiplicity, 2021, DOI Link
View abstract ⏷
This book presents a pragmatic engagement between the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and various facets of Indian society, culture and art. The universal appeal of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari finds its due place in India with a set of innovative analyses and radical interpretations that reimagine India as a complex multiplicity. The volume brings together scholars from various disciplines and theoretical orientations to explore a wide range of issues in contemporary India, like dalit and caste studies, nationalism, gender question, art and cinema, and so on under the rubric of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. This interdisciplinary book will be useful to scholars and researchers of philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies.
