To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we invite contributions to a special issue of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies Journal entitled: A Deleuzian Life - the people to come, to be published in 2025.
Abstracts due: 18 December 2023
Call for participation
In his late essay, "Immanence: A Life...", Gilles Deleuze portrays life as a wild and powerful movement animated by virtualities. Life grasps the virtual through processes of actualization, laying out a plane of action, making a plan that gives each life its unique specificity. Isabelle Stengers, a close reader of Deleuze, builds upon this movement by arguing for the construction of planes of immanence relative to the problems that are most pressing in our local worlds. To construct concepts – philosophical, artistic, scientific – we must believe in this world and we must choose the problems that are most pertinent amid our ecologies of practice. Deleuze and Guattari insist that ‘[It] may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today.’ Belief in the world, as challenging as this currently is, means working towards collective modes of expression that assemble the best possible political compositions. Deleuze teaches us that time unfolds through multiple syntheses, incorporating past, present, and future; as Elizabeth Povinelli argues, the threat of a coming catastrophe enfolds an ancestral catastrophe we are obliged to cope with. These complex folds and syntheses expose us to lessons ready to be learnt. For instance, the ethical imperative for new practices to follow the materials of environment-worlds.
With this dedicated birthday issue of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies Journal we aim to breathe a remarkable novelty into the ideas of our predecessors by exploring how to think and practice with Deleuze. Our objective is to open a space for experimental writing, reading, speaking, thereby creating a philosophical image of thought that summons a coming people, and an emergent community of practice. How do we take the greatest possible care to include those voices that are missing, or those people who are yet to arrive, as well as those who remain under-represented, still discovering their own voices in order to cry out for what is possible? How do we confront what is unbearable in our contemporary situation, whether that be the death of children or the wholesale destruction of environments? Through the concepts of territorialization and the counter-conduct expressed through deterritorialization as a practice of creative resistance, Deleuze offers us a way to address the forces of oppression.
In this special issue we aim to foster a dialogue between established and emerging scholars, hoping to amplify a diversity of voices and celebrate what we learn together. We want to explore how the practice of philosophy serves as a powerful dynamic by asking who is learning from whom. In this we pursue a rhythm of affects, aiming for the most active affects in our encounters, all the while acknowledging the role of melancholy, for without the sad passions how would the rhythm of a life continue? With our call for expressions of interest in pursuing a Deleuzian life, we encourage experimentation with modes of expression, including writing styles and formats, as well as visual and graphic forms of thought. We ask: How do we express what it means to live and practice a Deleuzian life?
Publication timeline
Abstracts of 300 words due: 18 December 2023
Creative Project Proposals can include an abstract of 300 words and 1 to 3 images
Please include a title, 5 keywords, and an author’s bio (50 words)
Notification of acceptance abstracts by 4th March 2024
ZOOM seminar/workshop for accepted papers 3rd May 2024
Full Papers Due: 10th June 2024
Preliminary Editorial Feedback: Mid July
Submit for Peer Review: End of August
Final Submission Date: End of October
Contact and submission of abstracts: dgsinsthlm25@gmail.com