Revisiting Normativity with Deleuze

Description

This volume assembles some of the most distinguished scholars in the field of Deleuze studies in order to provide both an accessible introduction to key concepts in Deleuze's thought and to test them in view of the issue of normativity. This includes not only the law, but also the question of norms and values in the broader ethical, political and methodological sense. The volume argues that Deleuze's philosophy rejects the unitary vision of the subject as a self-regulating rationalist entity and replaces it with a process-oriented relational vision of the subject. But what can we do exactly with this alternative nomadic vision? What modes of normativity are available outside the parameters of liberal, self-reflexive individualism on the one hand and the communitarian model on the other? This interdisciplinary volume explores these issues in three directions that mirror Deleuze and Guattari's defense of the parallelism between philosophy, science, and the arts. The volume therefore covers socio-political and legal theory; the epistemological critique of scientific discourse and the cultural, artistic and aesthetic interventions emerging from Deleuze's philosophy.

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She was the Founding Professor of Gender Studies in the Humanities at Utrecht (1988-2005) and the first scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies. P.P.R.W. (Patricia) Pisters is Professor of Media and Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is also chair of the Department of Media Studies there and member of the steering committee of NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies).

This impressive collection of essays demonstrates how far Deleuzian research has moved into a new phase of engagement with fundamental questions in the humanities and sciences. It reflects the recent turn towards normative issues in Deleuzian philosophy, not only in the domains of political and legal philosophy in which they have been prominent but also in new areas such as epistemology, aesthetics and visual art. It provides informative and rigorous application of Deleuzian ideas to problems arising in philosophy, economics, literature and cognitive science. Revisiting Normativity with Deleuze truly represents the 'state of the art' in contemporary Deleuze studies. -- Paul Patton, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Australia