All entries for Monday 15 November 2004

November 15, 2004

PhD proposal submitted

I have finally submitted a PhD proposal:

  • To investigate the method outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, most explicitly in What is Philosophy? and implicitly in earlier works.
  • An examination, as key to that definition of thinking, of immanence, virtuality, actuality, chaos, and the double nature of the event and of time.
  • To consider the role of technology and technological change in this method, examining how concepts form, inhabit, and overcome the tools through which they are expressed.
  • To apply the method to an increasingly powerful figure/concept: creativity.
  • Considering the syntagmatic pathway of the concept of creativity, both within key philosophical thinkers (including Bergson and Whitehead), within the arts (the debate between Klee and Kandinsky, and the works of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Bacon, Burrows and other contemporary artists), and within science (including artificial intelligence, computing, cognitive science, evolutionary biology – Germinal Life, complexity – Prigogene & Stengers).
  • Considering the power and diversity of concepts of creativity in educational and cultural policy (Ken Robinson, All Our Futures).
  • To identify the role of creativity in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, its unstated presence (Whitehead), and its sudden re-emergence in What is Philosophy?
  • To question whether creativity is itself a transcendent figure in their works.
  • To consider if a developed concept of creativity can be used to connect a wider range of communities and projects with Deleuze and Guattari, how this relates to current technological change, and how it can be used to guide it, with specific consideration of creative technologies in the academic process, organisational theory (Boisot), and within psychotherapeutic practice (Guattari, Le Borde).

The project will itself be undertaken with the aid of technologies that support conceptual development, writing and 'creativity'. The experience of using these tools will feed directly into the subject matter if the project. It will also be used for refining them and identifying further requirements in the development of tools to support the academic and philosophic process, and into the subject matter of the project itself. Particular emphasis will be placed upon examining the relationship between technologies that employ methods of semantic cartography and the process of conceptual development identified by Deleuze and Guattari.


Robert O'Toole : 15 Nov 2004 21:02 |  Tags:    |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem