The Annual National Deleuze Scholarship Conference is a conference intended to bring together scholars, students, activists, artists, and others working on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Each year, the conference is hosted at a different university in the Netherlands. In 2016 the conference is organized by the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) of the University of Amsterdam. This year the conference will revolve around the works of Deleuze’s with Guattari and the transversal relations to Guattari’s own work. We will specifically focus on topics concerning technology and its relation to the three ecologies of the environmental, the social and the mental.
The conference will consist of one day of panels and a keynote provided by dr. Alanna Thain (McGill University). The day prior to the conference, May 19th, there will be a public experimental workshop organized by ASCA’s Deleuze Reading, wherein What Is Philosophy? (1994) will be scrutinized. Prof. Jeffrey A. Bell (Southeastern Louisiana University) will be present to lead this workshop.
Organisers: Halbe Kuipers, Nur Ozgenalp, Patricia Pisters
Call for papers: Machinic Ecologies
In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari discuss their concept of the war machine in relation to weapons and tools that are defined in an ‘ecosystem’ which is traversed by a ‘machinic phylum’. Deleuze and Guattari see the machinic phylum as technological lineage (for instance, the iron sword descending from the dagger, the steel saber descending from the knife). Whether something becomes a weapon or a tool depends on the specific assemblages these metallurgical machines enter into. When Deleuze and Guattari speak of ‘ecosystems’ these are to be understood as the triply folded and complexly interwoven system of what Guattari has called the ‘three ecologies’ of environmental, social and mental ecologies. The connection and synthesis of these heterogeneous ecologies Deleuze and Guattari term ‘machinic’ (ATP 330) Therefore the metallurgical transformations of the machinic phylum have to be thought in ever changing and heterogeneous machinic assemblages, from materiality of the earth to our social life and collective and individual consciousness. We aim to get a deeper understanding of the power and necessity of Deleuze and Guattari’s machinic ecosophy in a techno-permeated world.
We welcome contributions on topics related to the various ways in which we connect to our metals, minerals, and technologies in this three folded ‘machinic’ ecologies. We welcome contributions from philosophy, science and arts that may include (but are not limited to) the philosophical lineage of Simondon and Bateson in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, the anthropology and politics of (urban) mining, ecocinema or other art practices and media ecologies.
Abstract submission deadline: 300 word abstracts with 5 keywords should be submitted by February 15th, 2016. Please send your abstracts in Word format to machinicecologies@gmail.com – mails should be entitled: “Machinic Ecologies – Submission”
Paper notifications: Acceptances will be notified on March 1st, 2016.
Conference-fee: Free participation.
NB: All participants will be required to finance their own travel and accommodation expenses.
Location: University of Amsterdam, exact locations will be announced with the program.