The Neurobiology of Sorcery: Deleuze and Guattari's Brain

Abstract

This article is intended to work on a number of different levels. First it is concerned with the brain-become-subject as hypothesized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their book What is Philosophy?. It is concerned with demonstrating the convergence between Deleuze and Guattari's work and the claims of some contemporary neuro-biological theories of consciousness. In particular, I will be comparing Deleuze and Guattari's hypothesis to the work of Gerald Edelman and Daniel Dennett. Second, it is my contention that the shared themes of this convergence amount to the renewal of a paradigm in the understanding of human consciousness and its relationship to the body, which I have elsewhere called `the new Bergsonism'. The emphasis in the text on themes such as duration, material connectedness and immanence, Becoming, multiplicity, selection and so on, is taken to be self-evidently Bergsonian. The primary task of this particular article is, then, to establish a careful technical demonstration of the existence of a shared set of themes and concepts. I have made this demonstration more concrete by placing it within the context of a discussion of the affective dimensions of the experience of social idiosyncrasy (as defined by Adorno and Horkheimer). My wider agenda is that this demonstration of shared themes in poststructuralism and neuro-science should contribute towards a more general attempt to establish a neo-Bergsonian paradigm at the heart of a new sociology of affect.

Trust, Risk and Uncertainty

“…Prompted by MacIntyre's character of the Manager, researchers on business ethics attempted to recognise the moral tensions faced by managers. For example, Watson (1998) argues that rather than characterise the Manager as someone devoid of morals, the interlinking of the corporate and private moral worlds needs closer attention. For Watson, managers do not bracket out personal morals, as Jackall stated.…”

“…For Watson, managers do not bracket out personal morals, as Jackall stated. Watson (1998) illustrates how managers debate with themselves about the dilemmas raised by the tension between corporate and private morals. Watson's ethnographic study of boardroom discussion found that '[a]ttempts to draw out from managers the "theories" which they applied in their managerial work produced accounts which "typically constituted a highly integrated mixture of the principled and the pragmatic, the normative and the positive" (Watson, 1996: 332) … These managers wanted -one might even say "needed" -to talk about these moral matters … the moral debate in this boardroom is not only far from strained and artificial, it is sophisticated and heartfelt' (Watson, 1998: 259).…”

Geography and neuroscience: Critical engagements with geography's “neural turn”

“…This approach is “bio‐social” in that it proposes that the individual, atomistic, rational self is a modernist fiction and Cartesian error, and that we need to develop a new performative style of thinking concerning human nature and the subject. The influence of neuroscience can be traced within Deleuzian strands of NRT in geography, as evidenced by Deleuze and Guattari's materialist and embodied conceptualisation of the brain as a site of the “resolution of forces” within which the radical multiplicity of the world is selectively perceived, abstracted and creates new possibilities for thought (Watson, , pp. 29, 34).…”

Unfolding the Social: Quasi-Actants, Virtual Theory, and the New Empiricism of Bruno Latour

“…The problem is that Latour says very little about this ‘heart’, in which morality is presumably enfolded. Now, on whichever ontology we adopt, it seems persuasive to suggest that bodies (with its hearts, brains, and so on) contribute to morality, that they transports moral convictions from one place‐time to another as a more‐or‐less (un‐)conscious memory (see Watson, 1998). 6 Further, it seems reasonable to describe this human body‐work as indeed a work of folding: our bodies fold moral ‘choices’ in the here‐and‐now, as up against childhood events, inter‐personal relations, yesterdays' TV‐shows, and so on – in quite the same way as do material objects.…”