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28 Jul 2012

Time and Inquiry in Clifford Duffy's 'AsK'

posting by Corry Shores
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Time and Inquiry in Clifford Duffy's 'AsK'

See Clifford Duffy's 'AsK'

We are to ask ourselves what is a clock, a cock, adoodledoo? Yet we note the importance of this question really being a question, as the poem is titled 'ask,' and it has many question marks, and this question recurs in steady cycles. The affective impression is that questions themselves are under question when we ask 'what is a c(l)ock[adoodledoo]?'

Does the form of a question have something to do with the form of time, and what is the role of clock-like mechanisms in this formation?

The marquee-renewals make a cycle, like how every morning we hear cockadoodledoo from the cock at dawn. The hour hand will make 24 turns to relatively the same marking between each cockadoodledoo, and Duffy's marquee cycle will make something like 4320 cycles in that period. We know that time moves constantly forward, because it keeps moving in circles. The cycles create units of measure that allow us to put aside the continuous heterogeneous alteration through time to instead measure extending quantities of its flow. So is a c(l)ock[adoodledoo] merely a temporal homogenizer?

But why so much emphasis on the asking? What is it about asking that has something to do with time, clocks, cycles, and so forth?

The clock homogenizes. Yet what it homogenizes might be seen as a series of askings, of askings: 'what's next?' What's next, come next dawn? Another cockadoodledoo. But what is next every instant whatever? This is always for us primarily a yet-answered question. It is a sort of drama of the world's mutations.

What is the pure form of time? Putting aside time's actual passage, its form is the immanence of before and after which are in a relation of succession. They are immanent to one another, because time is always in passage from before to after, thus they cannot be structurally apart. So the c(l)ock[adoodledoo] tells us that time is passing, which means there is always a continuous flux of change. Yet the form of time, the before with after, does not change.

A question has a certain sort of temporality. Its answer comes after and is somehow brought into life through its question. When we ask a question, we have already evoked its answer, even though it is not yet explicit. The after is implicitly given with its before in the structure of the question.

So what then is a clock, a cock (adoodledoo), a Duffy marqueed poem? It is a constant reminder that each moment is an asking to be answered. The form of time and the form of a question share in common a bringing into implicit immanence the after with its before.

Clifford Duffy, 'asK'
http://recalltopoetry.blogspot.be/2012/07/ask.html

25 Jul 2012

Preview: What Is Calculus? in Ewards and Penney's Calculus

presentation of Edwards & Penney's work, by Corry Shores
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Edwards & Penney's Calculus is an incredibly-impressive, comprehensive, and understandable book. I highly recommend it.

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[I your author am not a mathematician; I am merely an admirer of Edwards & Penney's wonderful calculus book. Please consult the text or other references to be certain about anything in the summary below. I mean this emphatically.]

[This section introduces problems that we later discuss much further in detail.]



Summary of
Edwards & Penney
Calculus

Chapter 1. Functions, Graphs, and Models
Section 1.5. Preview: What Is Calculus?


Calculus ("the calculus") is a body of computational techniques. It revolves around two basic geometrical problems, and mathematicians have been dealing with these problems for over 2000 years. Both problems involve "the graph y = f(x) of a given function." (p.45)


Problem 1: The Tangent Problem

One problem calculus tries to solve is finding the 'line tangent' at a given point on a curve y = f(x).


Edwards and Penney then formulate the tangent problem with reference to this graph:


So let's first recall what a function is. Functions describe relationships between variables. The function describes the way that one variable varies with respect to another variable, often formulated y = f(x). So consider the function y = x2.

We have two variables, x and y. Both are varying, both increase in value. But the way that the one increases with respect to the other is further describable. As the x value increases, the y value increases to the power of two. So when x has the value of 2, y has the value of 4. And when x is 4, y is 16, and so on. Edwards and Penney offer this definition for functions.

Function:
A real-valued function f defined on a set D of real numbers is a rule that assigns to each number x in D exactly one real number, denoted by f (x).


The set D of all numbers for which f (x) is defined is called the domain (or domain of definition) of the function f. The number f (x), read "f of x," is called the value of the function f at the number (or point) x. The set of all values y = f (x) is called the range of f . That is, the range of f is the set {y: y = f (x) for some x in D). [p.2d]


So recall again the graph Edwards and Penney are using to describe the tangent problem.


Here we see that x varies with respect to y in such a way that the series of their correlated variations makes a waving curve. Now we consider a point P along the continuous variation of x's and y's correlations. a point is described with the x and y coordinate values (x, y). But the way we find y is by finding the value of the function applied to the value of x. So the y value can also be noted as f(x), and thus the coordinates for point P along the function y = f(x) would be P(x, f(x)). In the case of y = x2, we might consider the point (2, 4) for example. Thus the tangent problem:

The Tangent Problem
Given a point P(x, f(x)) on the curve y = f(x), how do we calculate the slope of the tangent line at P?

Finding the tangent gives us what is called the derivative of the function f, and later Edwards and Penney explain how we obtain derivatives. This is largely a matter of differential calculus.

Example


We are driving down a straight road. It takes us a certain amount of time (t) to go a certain distance, and the way that the distance increases as time increases can be described with the function y = f(t). If we find the slope at point (t, f(t)), then we find the velocity at time t.


Problem 2: The Area Problem

Consider this graph.



We might want to know what the area is below the curve between a and b.

The Area Problem
If f(x) ≧ 0 for x in the interval [a, b], how do we calculate the area A of the plane region that lies between the curve y = f(x) and the x-axis over the interval [a, b]?


Example

Consider this graph.

Unlike the prior example which correlated the way that distance varied with respect to time, this new graph shows how velocity varies with respect to time, given with the function y = f(t). So f(t) gives us the velocity of the car at time t. This means that the area under the curve within the time interval [a, b] gives us the distance the car travels between time a and time b.

Text summary and images from:
Edwards & Penney: Calculus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, pp.2; 45-47.

Transcendental Equations in Edwards & Penney's Calculus


presentation of Edwards & Penney's work, by Corry Shores
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Edwards & Penney's Calculus is an incredibly-impressive, comprehensive, and understandable book. I highly recommend it.

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[I your author am not a mathematician; I am merely an admirer of Edwards & Penney's wonderful calculus book. Please consult the text or other references to be certain about anything in the summary below. I mean this emphatically.]



Transcendental Equations in Edwards & Penney's Calculus


What do transcendental equations got to do with you?

Because they are all transcendental equations, see the got-to-do entries for trigonometric, exponential, and logarithmic functions.


Brief Summary

The solution to transcendental equations with the form f(x) = g(x) is the intersections of the graphs of the functions.


Points Relative to Deleuze

Again, because they are all transcendental equations, see the got-to-do entries for trigonometric, exponential, and logarithmic functions.


Summary of
Edwards & Penney
Calculus

Chapter 1: Functions, Graphs, and Models
Section 1.4: Transcendental Functions

Subsection 5: Transcendental Equations


We previously examined trigonometric, exponential, and logarithmic functions. These are all types of transcendental functions. Equations that include transcendental functions within them may have infinitely many solutions. Yet they might also have just a finite number of solutions. Edwards and Penney note one approach to dealing with transcendental equations. We might render them as

f(x) = g(x)

"where both the functions f and g are readily graphed." (p.40d) Wherever graphs y = f(x) and y = g(x) intersect are the solutions to the equation.


Example

Consider these graphs


There is a single point where graphs y = x and y = cos x. This means that the equation x = cos x has only one solution. The graphs also tell us that the solution lies within the interval (0, 1).

Text summary and images from:
Edwards & Penney: Calculus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, pp.40-41.

The Nature of Logarithmic Functions. Logarithmic Functions in Edwards & Penney's Calculus

Edwards & Penney's Calculus is an incredibly-impressive, comprehensive, and understandable book. I highly recommend it.

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[I your author am not a mathematician; I am merely an admirer of Edwards & Penney's wonderful calculus book. Please consult the text or other references to be certain about anything in the summary below. I mean this emphatically.]


The Nature of Logarithmic Functions
Logarithmic Functions in Edwards & Penney's Calculus


What do logarithmic functions got to do with you?

In the natural world around us, things often expand or tapper off in a steady way. Consider how sound reverberations taper off or how logarithmic spirals expand:

(Thanks wikipedia )

Logarithms can help us study many phenomena in the natural world around us.


Brief Summary

y = logax if ay = x


Points Relative to Deleuze

Deleuze writes:

Since intensity is already difference, it refers to a series of other differences that it affirms by affirming itself. It is said that in general there are no reports of null frequencies, no effectively null potentials, no absolutely null pressure, as though on a line with logarithmic gradations where zero lies at the end of an infinite series of smaller and smaller fractions. (Difference and Repetition 234c)

As a sound tapers off seemingly to nothing, it is perhaps undergoing an infinite series of lowering variations. The diminishing wave is not so much being negated as it is being constituted by infinitesimal differential relations.


Summary of
Edwards & Penney
Calculus

Chapter 1: Functions, Graphs, and Models
Section 1.4: Transcendental Functions

Subsection 4: Logarithmic Functions


Before we examine logarithmic functions, first recall exponential functions. In an exponential function, a constant base is raised to a variable power. A logarithmic function is an inverse to an exponential function. So consider this formulation for logarithmic functions:

y = logax if ay = x

Here we have a, y, and x. a is the base, y is an exponential power of a, and x is the value of a raised to the power of y. "The base a logarithm of the positive number x is the power to which a must be raised to get x." (p.39c)

Base 10 is the common logarithm: log10x

Later we discuss the natural logarithm e, which is a special irrational number.

lnx = logex

e = 2.71828182845904523536 . . . .

Edwarts and Penny graph y = lnx and y = log10x.


Both graphs rise slowly and steadily as they move to the right, and also, both graphs cross through point (1, 0). Logarithmic functions cannot have negative numbers or zero in their domains, because exponential functions cannot take on zero or negative values. The function log x = log10x increases slowly as x increases. We see this in the graph and also in the fact that log10100,000 = 5 and log101,000,000 = 6. Consider how on the contrary in exponential function ax (with a > 1) growth increases more rapidly than any other powerfunction as x → ∞. The f0llowing example shows how logarithmic functions increase slower than power functions.


Example



This table compares the rate of growth in the power function


with the rate of growth for the logarithmic function g(x) = logx. Here are graphs displaying these values.



As we can see in both the table and the graph, when x > 100,000, logx is smaller than



The graph below shows us the values when x is much smaller.


Here we see that logx at the lower values begins smaller than




but when x nears 5, the growth of logx overtakes


Then much later in their development,


overtakes logx when x = 100,000. Then, when x = 1050,


equals 5,000,000,000, while logx only equals 50.



Deleuze, Gilles. Difference & Repetition. Transl. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Text summary and images from:
Edwards & Penney: Calculus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, pp.39-40.

Shell image from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NautilusCutawayLogarithmicSpiral.jpg


Powers of Transformation. Exponential Functions in Edwards & Penney's Calculus

Edwards & Penney's Calculus is an incredibly-impressive, comprehensive, and understandable book. I highly recommend it.

[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[I your author am not a mathematician; I am merely an admirer of Edwards & Penney's wonderful calculus book. Please consult the text or other references to be certain about anything in the summary below. I mean this emphatically.]


Powers of Transformation
Exponential Functions in Edwards & Penney's Calculus



What do exponential functions got to do with you?

As we are learning how to swim, there is a whole host of powers/abilities/capacities that we are acquiring. For example, we are becoming able to enjoy swimming at the beach, to learn watersports like waterpolo or competitive swimming, to be capable of saving a drowning person, to be fit for sailing, and so on. So in a sense, becoming a swimmer does not merely add a little to our powers, but raises our powers to a whole new level of expression. Then consider if we do take up sailing. As we are becoming a sailor, we then are rising to yet another even higher level; for, we can move great distances on the water, compete in races, have new experiences out at sea, and so forth. If we continue through a sequence of changes in which one increased power raises us up to a far greater level from which we can yet rise yet remarkably further, this is something like growing exponentially. Each increase gives us more powers. But also, each increase gives us more power to increase. So one way we might understand our continuous changing is that we go through a series of states. But maybe we can also judge the changes that we go through and that we put ourselves through on the basis of how they increase our ability to increase our abilities. Who we are changes over time, but there is a sort of 'constant', which is our constantly changing in power.


Brief Summary

In an exponential function, a constant base is raised to a variable power.


Points Relative to Deleuze

Our series of self-transformations is for Deleuze and Orson Welles like a series of forgers or fakes of oneself, yet these are self-creative forgeries or fakeries. Each such self-forgery is like an exponential power increase:

It is Welles who, beginning with The Lady from Shanghai, imposes one single character, the forger. But the forger exists only in series of forges who are his metamorphoses, because the power itself exists only in the form of a series of powers which are its exponents. (Deleuze, Cinema 2, 140b)

Summary of
Edwards & Penney
Calculus

Chapter 1: Functions, Graphs, and Models
Section 1.4: Transcendental Functions

Subsection 3: Exponential Functions


Before examining exponential functions, we first will review power functions for contrast. In both cases of power functions and exponential functions, we speak of their 'form', which means we give explicit formulation to the categories of its component parts and of their relations. The form that power functions takes is

f (x) = xk (where k is a constant)

So in some specific case of a power function, the base is a variable that can take on one from a range of values, while the exponent is specified as some given numerical value.

Exponential functions, however, take this form:

f(x) = ax

We see that in exponential functions, the base is given as a constant, while the exponent is a variable that may take-on one of a range of values. Edwards and Penney write that in the case of power functions, the variable is raised to a constant power, while in exponential functions, a constant is raised to a variable power. (37c)

Below is a graph (made with geogebra) resembling the diagram in Edwards & Penney, and showing exponential functions y = 2x (blue) and y = 10x (red).


Example 6

Consider exponential functions when they have a base that is greater than one (base a > 1). Its value increases quite rapidly when the exponent x is large. Power functions, however, grow more slowly as x increases.


Edwards and Penney then have us consider smaller values for x2 and 2x. Seeing where their graphs overlap tell us the solutions to the equation x2 = 2x.


They also have us consider when the exponent in the exponential function is negative. The graphs for such functions fall from left to right.

The authors then compare the purposes of trigonometric and exponential functions. We use trigonometric functions to describe "periodic phenomena of ebb and flow;" however, we use exponential functions to describe "natural processes of steady growth or steady decline." (p38bc)


from Edwards & Penney: Calculus. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, pp.37-38.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Transl. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London & New York: 1989.

4 Jul 2012

Kneading Friendship: Deleuze, Blanchot, and the Folding of Disciplines

by Corry Shores
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The following is Julie Van der Wielen's and my presentation at the Deleuze, Philosophy, Transdisciplinarity conference at Goldsmiths College, University of London in February of 2012. Thank you Masa Kosugi, Guillaume Collett, and Chryssa Sdrolia for all your help and for organizing the wonderful conference.


Julie Van der WielenCorry Shores

Kneading Friendship:Deleuze, Blanchot, and the Folding of Disciplines


[Corry Shores reads:]

We would like now to explain Deleuze’s appreciation for Blanchot’s idea that friendship is the condition for thought, and as well, how for both of them, friendship is as well philosophy’s path to transdisciplinarity.


[Julie Van Der Wielen reads:]


Friendship

When you have a friend who tries to get to close to you, or you try to get to close to a friend, either by trying to be the same or by trying to know his deepest thoughts, it will get uncomfortable. Also, we are all aware of the fact that it’s wrong to dispose of knowledge we have from a friend and to talk about the friend when this one is absent. Distance is needed, even between the closest friends. In his reflections about friendship, Blanchot takes the distance between friends as a necessary condition for their relation.

Because the other is irreducibly other and I am inevitably separated from him, a kind of collision takes place between me and the other wherein I’m confronted to a limit: I’m radically different from the other, I can’t posses him and even the possibility of really understanding the other person is questionable. This distance between me and the other, our being radically separated from each other is the precondition for a relation between us. The distance as an interval, an interruption of being or as a no man’s land, is where friendship takes place. In this openness of the interval the other is present and nearby, but this proximity hides and affirms the other as very far-off and belonging to no one. What I see of my friend when I talk to him, when I decipher his gestures or silence is an openness to his thought, nevertheless I will never really access this distant thought. Even in the closest moments, the infinite distance between friends remains.

This is why, in the last chapter of l’Amitie, Blanchot writes on the impossibility to write about his friend Georges Bataille. He doesn’t accept to write on Bataille’s character or on his thoughts because with his death, their relation as separation disappeared and all that is left are memories of that of Bataille which was close to people, not the distant reality where this proximity was the affirmation of. Without the presence of the friend, there is no possible openness to him and his thought. My relation with my friend preserves the openness to his thought. As the presence of my friend and our relation are a condition for me to find a possible openness to him, any grasp on him is out of the question, if without a relation or dialogue with him. Our relation follows an unpredictable course, where presence and dialogue are necessary to openness. For this reason I cannot know univocally who my friend is, and he will always be infinitely far from me. I can only find openness to his thought when we are present to each other, in an unpredictable movement of understanding which makes it impossible for me to get hold on him.

Another name Blanchot gives to the interval between friends, rising from the unpredictability of the other and his absolute strangeness, is discretion. This is not just the outright refusal to make assertions about the friend, or to dispose of knowledge I have of him, it is the pure interval as everything that is between us. The discretion doesn’t prevent communication, it links us up in difference, making communication possible through speech or silence. The interval or discretion is a necessary condition to communication. Real communication implies the acknowledgement of its limit, the distance between two parties. This limit shows it is impossible to talk about my friend but only to talk to him. It is an impossibility which opens up infinite possibility: impossibility of understanding by which we are driven to create new meaning, radical difference that pulls together.

We can see the interval operate in speech: talking together is never actually talking at the same time. Speech goes from one to the other, the talkers take turns. The impossibility to talk together opens up to the possibility of a dialogue. This dialogue follows an unpredictable course since there is always the possibility of contradiction, development or affirmation of my thought by the friend. The impossibility to predict the course of the conversation is a necessary condition to communication.

In a dialogue with a friend I should never claim comprehension of my friend or of fixed meaning. Communication and the relation with my friend is an unpredictable movement rising from the impossibility to get hold on the other. When Blanchot claims friendship is a necessary condition to thought, we should look at it this way: thought should be openness without pretention of fixed meaning, as in friendship communication should be a dialogue with the other as an unpredictable movement. In the Abecedaire, Deleuze paraphrases Blanchot saying friendship is a condition for thought, not because we need friends to think but because the category of friendship is a condition for the exercise of thought.


[Corry Shores reads:]

We also find Deleuze offering a strikingly similar account of friendship. Consider first his example of comedic friends, Laurel and Hardy.


Their cartoonish contrasts suggests they would regard one another as though from a great distance. One is fat, the other skinny; one more extroverted, the other more introverted. Yet, they always seem to be in communion with one another, despite their features that might normally push them apart. It is as if they are constantly together in communication. Even when one is physically distant from the other, we still never sense that there is a break in that continued communicative link that holds them together. But, what about when they seem to miscommunicate, like when Hardy says he is waiting for a streetcar, as if charmed rather than enraged by Laurel’s feigned innocence? Despite the disconnection and absurdity of their messages to one another, they do not break their constant bond of communicative contact.

Is it not as though they share a unique language that makes sense only to them? Would we really be surprised if Laurel and Hardy spent a whole day together without ever saying even one word, while the whole time, still conducting a sort of unspoken dialogue that unfolds without any need for conventional signs?


For Deleuze, our friendships form not on the basis of our explicit messages to one another, but rather on a more profound sort of reading of one another’s implicit and even inexplicable expressions to one another, or what Deleuze here calls signs.

Yet they are not signs in the sense of representations; they instead form a sort of prelanguage. But how are they read, if it is not by means of explicit interpretations? One reason is that they are sensed affectively. Friends are charmed by these implicit messages that reveal something slightly less than sane about the other, something that would only lose its meaning if it were clearly stated. These mutually-affective charming signs pull friends together even though there remains between them something mysterious and unspoken, something that might normally make people feel a distance to one another. And yet, it is not like a secret code that both can decipher. Friends do not share common ideas. They do not necessarily know what the other means, although they still know that they are saying something meaningful to one another.

Deleuze even discusses his own friendships to further illustrate. When he and his hypo-chondriac friend-converse, there might seem to be an absurd disconnect between what they say to one another. For example, if Deleuze asks him how he is doing, his friend replies “like a cork tossed by the sea.” But with Guattari, they may both just simply observe to one another that they have the same brand of hat. In the first case of communication, their explicit meanings did not need to cleanly match for them to read their deeper inexplicable signs. Yet, in the second case of noticing the same hats, it seems they say nothing important at all to one another; but nonetheless, something more profound transpired between them.

Now, to understand why Deleuze appreciates Blanchot’s point that friendship is the condition for thought, we will turn to Deleuze’s discussion of neurophysiology. What we will then suggest is that a friendship of disciplines happens not when they completely understand one another, but when they like friends are sensitive to each other’s inexplicable and charming signs.

We make this connection, because Deleuze talks in similar terms when discussing the brain activity at work in our thinking.

[Clips should be played and viewed simultaneously, if possible]



The brain’s production of ideas is a bit like the activities in a pinball machine. Neural electrical events often occur randomly, indeterminately, and probabilistically. Also, there are both continuous and discontinuous communications between neural circuits. Deleuze notes how very distant neurons can make a ‘jump’ over their gap in this probabilistic scheme.




To further illustrate, he describes a mathematical concept called the baker’s transformation. It gets its name from the procedure that bakers perform when kneading bread dough. They stretch it, which makes it flatter. Then they fold it back upon itself, which returns it to its thicker form. Here first is Deleuze showing the transformative motions with his hands.


bakers transformation animation
(Animation above is my own, made with OpenOffice Draw and Unfreeze)

Likewise, in the Baker’s Transformation, a square is stretched and then folded back upon itself. This animation shows the geometrical rendition of the transformation.

bakers transformation deleuze intensity depth animation
(Animation above is my own, made with OpenOffice Draw and Unfreeze)

What Deleuze observes is how distant points will come together after some number of transformations.

Deleuze uses this example not only to illustrate neuro-biological activity during thinking, but also how he was able to connect ideas between disciplines that he had no training or background in. These illustrations might remind us of how friends communicate without knowing explicitly each other’s meanings. On the basis of charming signs that Deleuze detects in various disciplines, he is able to cross these disparate fields in order to understand ideas that connect them, even without him having the expertise normally needed for uncovering these concepts. He offers two examples.








Michelson Morely Experiment Animation for Bergson's Duration and Simultaneity
(Animation above is my own, made with OpenOffice Draw and Unfreeze)

Delaunay image credits, in order
(Thanks spenceralley)
(Thanks leninimports)
(Thanks keepingupwithmyjoneses)
(Thanks joearevaloadam)
(Thanks 1artclub)

In one, he comes to understand an aspect of relativity theory through painting. He wanted to conceptualize regarding the Michelson experiment the way that a light beam expresses a form that is independent of the geometrical structure of the channel that the light beam moves through. In this moving diagram above, we observe the independent diagonal path that the vertical beam traverses, were it seen from an immobile point of reference.

Deleuze arrived at this concept not by working through the mathematics, but instead when he conjoined this scientific expression of the concept with the artistic one of Delaunay, who paints not the geometrical forms that the light shines on, but rather, he paints light itself as independently expressing forms in its own way. His other example is the way he came to understand Riemann space. He needed to grasp how each point is like a joint that varies the space in a non-predetermined way. He obtained this concept by juxtaposing the mathematical expression of this concept with these scenes in Bresson’s Pickpocket.


Deleuze further accounts how mathematicians tell him after reading the details of his mathematical writings that it fits together within what they know in their more specialized way, even though they and Deleuze would probably misunderstand each other in an intellectual conversation. He as well had such resonances with artists. In fact, Deleuze explains the importance also for philosophers to have a non-specialized reading of other philosophers, as if a philosopher for example would read Spinoza the way a merchant would.

For philosophical concepts to form, Deleuze explains, we need as well to have a non-philosophical reading of philosophical texts. So in this way, philosophers should alsoin a sense befriend other philosophers, as well as other non-philosophers, by dwelling below one other’s specialized terminology to instead produce concepts through non-representational communication.


[Julie Van der Wielen reads:]

Philosophy as friendship

Like Deleuze, Blanchot thinks friendship is a condition for thought. Philosophy should proceed in dialogue with the other, otherwise it strangles itself. Nothing is left then but thought thinking itself, scraping concepts until they’re empty. Blanchot himself oscillates between philosophy and literature, saying they’re both open to one another. He believes philosophy needs to be talked to from the outside, staying at her side we have to talk to her from outside, making a dialogue possible. As thought, philosophy needs to be in dialogue with a distant other in order to continue her unpredictable discourse.



Image credits

Delaunay

http://spenceralley.blogspot.com/2011/12/sonia-delaunay-again.html


http://joearevaloadam.blogspot.com/2009/08/robert-delaunay-1885-1941-hommage.htm

http://www.leninimports.com/robert_delaunay.html


http://keepingupwithmyjoneses.blogspot.com/2011/08/explore-art-projects-robert-delaunay.html

http://www.1artclub.com/tall-portuguese-woman-by-robert-delaunay/