All posts filed under: representation

Intensive Depths: Notes on Difference and Repetition

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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affirmation / Deleuze / depth / difference / Difference and Repetition / extensity / heterogeneity / illusion / quality / representation / sensibility / unground / volume

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze proposes what we may be permitted to term a differential phenomenology capable at last of setting mathematics and logic themselves upon a proper “ground” — that of difference, and multiplicity… Not only is it possible to overturn representation, but we can begin right away — if we immediately cease to encode relationships between singularities as identities, oppositions, analogies, and so on — but instead in terms of constitutive inequalities. Deleuze’s […]

Expressive Networks

Tuesday, March 4, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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boundary / diagram / expression / form / knowledge / language / machine / network / organization / parasite / relationship / representation / topology / wikipedia

expressive networks towards a new diagrammatic model for the abstraction and representation of relational knowledge How can we apply distributed network theory to knowledge representation? In this paper, we advance a new hypothesis regarding the role of the network topology in information science. In particular, we argue for the need (and significant advantage) of thinking in terms of a parasitic or “counter-network” topology. While networks are certainly good at representing many things, we need to […]

Language is not a Signal: Notes on Wilhelm von Humboldt

Monday, January 28, 2008
by Joseph Weissman
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concept / decision / dialogue / distinction / humboldt / language / metaphysics / order word / protoype / representation / segmentation / sign / Thought

Language is not a Signal: Notes on Wilhelm von Humboldt One of the earliest and most strident critiques of the signifier, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s philosophy of language refused the even-then-canonical concept of a “sign” by questioning the universal conceptual image of a language as representation. Beneath the semiotic aspect of language — the “common sense” idea of language as utterance, signalling, communicating, “saying” — Humboldt catches sight of a more profound function of language, where […]

Notes to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle: Chapters 1 and 2

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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capitalism / commodity fetishism / consumption / Debord / image / isolation / marxism / materialism / May 68 / reification / representation / separation / simulacrum / Society of the Spectacle / spectacle / Theory / Philosophy

Separation Perfected But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence…illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. –Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity […]

Kant, the Antinomies, and the Soul as Rebel Element

Friday, May 4, 2007
by Taylor Adkins
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Deleuze / intuition / kant / representation / set theory / soul / surface / transcendental object

Kant’s working through of a set of functions of representation that support the interaction between the subject and object-as-appearance is dizzying to say the least. Beginning with the concepts of intuition and sensibility, Kant elaborates his distinctions between the a priori and a posteriori by linking them with their analogues: intellectual intuition and empirical sensation. Since Kant ends with intellectual intuition (B72), it is better to start with a more primary opposition. What is essential […]