/lit/ - Literature

The description of these two modes as reference frames of each other places neither as prior to the other, both mutually necessary fundamental betweenesses of the nature of change itself. Its necessity is seen in calculus, the mathematical study of change, with integration (cumulative change) and differentiation (instantaneous change) being inverse operations of the same process. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze realizes this relationship, associating his concept of difference with differential calculus.

The Problem of the modern world (it's trajectory towards omnicide) is caused by catastrophically anti-creative practices that have their roots in the integralist mechanicism of the Cartesian Era that while overturned in the sciences have persisted in our technological praxis. Yuk Hui's examination of organicism and organology in relation to the question of technology in the 21st century is right where the money is. Deleuze's work was very much about trying to advance perspectives out of totalizing Cartesian mechanicism.

Another very relevant read is Terrence Deacon's "Incomplete Nature" which examines among other things the concept of the absential: "The paradoxical intrinsic property of existing with respect to something missing, separate, and possibly nonexistent. Although this property is irrelevant when it comes to inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind; elsewhere (Deacon 2005) described as a constitutive absence." A great book to read along with this is Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop" which advances towards a process-relational theory of cognition, again with the concept of recursion (strange loopiness) central to the book, whereas Deacon's work emphasizes contingency. Even the covers of these two books have a spooky resemblance to each other.