About

It is hard to describe what is going on here. I am a novelist, (and a poet), who takes philosophy very seriously. That is to say, the study and examination of ideas, both in their genetic history, and in their contemporary creation, is central to my process of writing fiction and poem. The narrative, the description is exprimit out of this (to make a grammatical conflation). So these pages are a collection of my studies which began from out of a love of Deleuze and Guattari, I would say, though my debt to philosophy is much, much older. For it was his/their trigger-point book Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia which challenged me to discover these schools of thought with which I was unfamiliar (more than a decade ago, when I discovered the book in the St. Marks Bookstore). This lead to a variety of footnote tracing studies which has gone quite far from their source. An engagement with Lacan, deep readings in Continental Feminist philosophy, and a concurrent reading European literature followed; and then came Spinoza–it is hard to trace the full lineage of a thought–whose philosophy has subsumed the entire project of discovery: and I stand on both sides of the Spinoza aisle, reading richly both those of the Della Rocca and the Negri strain. To this Spinozism came a love (and criticism) of Wittgenstein, an appreciation of American Pragmatism, and lastly, the recognition of how the philosophy of Donald Davidson gives a contemporary grammar for the concerns and metaphysics that Spinoza engaged, bringing the Analytic and Continental schools into communication. Rorty was an initial guide in this. All this is combined with an over-riding love for the study of Ancient Greek language, philosophy and literature, and seems to have produced a comprehensive and sociological view of metaphysics, one that not only maintains a Social Theory and critique, but also Autopoietic, cybernetic conceptions of life. Recently, a focus on the life and philosophy of Tomasso Campanella has garnered my attention. He is a philosopher who haunts me in his call for historical redemption, and it may be my aim to show how his thought is enlightening towards the consequences of many of Spinoza’s positions. If I had to quantify, I am a devout materialist, but as a Spinozist, see material under a vector of an affective power, and the capacity to act, which is the focus of both ethical and aesthetic concerns. What this weblog is, is a record of this thought process as it ultimately relates to the production of fiction, which is really my greater love and aim. Hopefully the weblog also serves as a well-spring for other persons, their thoughts and their concerns. As I say, it is a hard thing to describe what is going on here. It is a filing of the categories of my mind.

Addendum to those first thoughts written early on: At this point I would have to add that there is one tripod leg of this process which has formed something of the intellectual kernel of my thinking, and that is my studies of Spinoza’s optical theories, practices and likely experiences, sub-headed in Spinoza’s Foci. In this research, seemingly, an entirely neglected field of Spinoza’s study is engaged, and the work upon historical reality seems to have grounded my entire creative process, formalizing perhaps my belief that the mental is always physical. In order to understand, in order for me to understand, what is going on here, due concentration on Spinoza’s Foci seems required. The process continues.

any thoughts, contact me here: kevin.vonduuglasittu@gmail.com  or at @mediasres