Description
Book SynopsisNonphilosophy poses a challenge to philosophical thought, inspired by the work of François Laruelle. It questions the idea that philosophy, or other disciplines, can tell us what it means to think. This edited collection brings together an internationally known and interdisciplinary group of scholars, including a major new essay by Laruelle himself. Together they use nonphilosophy to cross the boundaries between philosophy and performance.
Philosophers have been busy for centuries looking for the foundations of truth, value, and reality. They try to say what it all means and how it all fits together. Areas of life like science and art have to wait for the philosopher to show up to tell them what they are really about. Theory dictates meaning: performance just puts it into effect. Nonphilosophy is different. It says that reality is not an object out there that we can think and understand. The Real is the place we stand: it is where we think from.
Crucially, nonphilosophy understands philosophy itself to be performative. It enacts modes of thinking that do not dominate the material of thought and do not capture the Real in concepts. Philosophy is mutated by its performances; and performances themselves think, are modes of theory. What happens when we bring philosophy, art, and performance together, without hierarchy? How can they get inside and change one another? The thinkers in this collection answer these pressing questions.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: ‘Art Saved or Destroyed by its Works’ by François Laruelle
Chapter 2: ‘Opening the Circle: Performance Philosophy &/as a radical equality of attention’ by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Chapter 3: ‘Art and Philosophy: New solidarities’ by Alice Rekab and Anne-Françoise Schmid
Chapter 4: ‘Plastic Matters: Lydia Clark’s Non-art and Other Non-philosophical Relations’ by Annalaura Alifuoco
Chapter 5: ‘Changing the world with non-philosophy or Laruelle and art-activism’ by Gary Anderson
Chapter 6: ‘Performing nonhuman language: ‘humaneity’ in Ron Athey’s Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing’ by Hannah Lammin
Chapter 7: ‘Out of the Ordinary: On Laruelle and the Mystic Performances of Mina Bergson’ by John Ó Maoilearca
Chapter 8: ‘Art, (Non-)Philosophy, and Quantum-Mechanical Complementarity’ by Edia Connole
Chapter 9: ‘Joyful Discontinuity: The Radical Immanence of Dementia’ by Niamh Malone
‘The Generative Tone: Musical Disruptions of Philosophy’s Tissue’ by Steven Shakespeare
Chapter 10: ‘Pointless: Art at the End of the World’ by Anthony Paul Smith
Index
