All 3 entries tagged Conceptual Personae

Research Notes: what is a concept? and the role of attention

Here's an initial concept map:

Robert O'Toole : 08 Nov 2005 13:58 |  Tags: Attention Concept Conceptual Components Conceptual Personae Deleuze Guattari Pedagogy Of The Concept Philosophy Research Transversality Transversality What Is Philosophy |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Spirit and the virtuality of concepts and their personae

I am making some progress at last, and feeling a small sense of recovery. Deleuze does make sense from where I am.

I will start with a simple fact: my friend has gone, and that has left me feeling that something immeasurable is missing. It is an overwhelming sensation. Disorientation. There is no way in which that can be repaired. She is irreplaceable. That is why she was so valuable, as a totality. Vividly and quite obviously a unique person.

But out of that singularity, traits can be extracted, picked up and carried onwards. That is what a vivid and unique person offers. There is something about them that makes a difference, and carries on making a difference. It is very much part of them, but at the same time is powerful enough to continue, to travel, to live on. These traits are the virtuality within the ever disappearing present, persisting beyond its immediate and constant passing and differentiation. Memory, an active memory. Or what before Nietzsche we called a soul or a spirit. They are traits that give a sense of the possible, a future, a continuity, a return.

As Deleuze would say, a trait can be taken up by a concept. It is as such the tool or weapon that is carried to guarantee survival, to re-orientate after the event, to regenerate, to carry the person onwards as a conceptual personae. Irreducible to a simple procedure or rule, a concept nonetheless carries (expresses) an arrangement (content) that sees the repetition of a local equilibrious state from a far from equilibrium event. A return.

So at least I have an idea, a concept out of which a future can grow. Some possibility of survival.

: 16 May 2005 21:15 |  Tags: Active Memory Conceptual Personae Eternal Return Nietzsche Philosophy Research Singularity Trait Transversality Transversality Virtuality |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ontology as recognized Being, or creativity as an old friend

Follow-up to Difference and Repetition, Nietzsche and the creative turn from Transversality - Robert O'Toole

…and a tension exists in the work of Deleuze between:

1. the move from an ontologically foundational Being to a recurrently disruptive but still at the same time foundational and ontological difference and repetition;
2. the requirement that on each application of that ontology (in science, in painting, in cinema, in psychotherapy…) it is renewed and rephrased differently, but again drawing on its conceptual power.

But of course as Deleuze moves the focus away from recognizing what Is to the question of 'how can we create?' that is not a problem. If a helper concept of creativity or difference works to make thought more creative, less repressive, then use it. If not, abandon it.

And that also makes sense of Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the philosopher as conceptual personae or friend of the concept – a friend recognizes and relies upon a friend, but its not a relationship of absolute foundational dependency. Rather, there is rivalry, competition, and sometimes abandonment.

Robert O'Toole : 04 Mar 2005 10:30 |  Tags: Being Conceptual Personae Creativity Deleuze Deleuze And Philosophy Friend Ontology Philosophy Research Recognition Transversality Transversality |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem