Ebook: An (Un)Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment(s) with Deleuze Guattari

This volume presents an original and in-depth study devoted to the discussion and relevance of the notion of 'the environment' and 'ecology' within the frame-work and 'ontology' of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Fel???­x Guattari. Their non-dualist and materialist re-thinking of these issues is analyzed from various positions within Cultural Studies and Sciences. 'Thinking environment[s]' with Deleuze|Guattari is thus far removed from what might be termed '(intellectual) tree-hugging' ?? it is basically a call to think complexity, and to complex thinking, a way to think the environment as a negotiation of dynamic arrangements of human and nonhuman stressors, both of which are informed and 'intelligent.' It refers to a pragmatic and site-specific tracing of infinitely complex arrangements, and as such cannot rely either on a theory of cultural constructivism, nor on a natural|biological determinism. Deleuze|Guattari provide a useful toolbox for such a project. 'Nature,' 'landscape,' 'environment' ?? in postmodern times, all of these terms and their connotations can no longer be restricted to what one might call 'the natural.' At a time when more and more artists (not to mention scientists!) operate on the threshold between biology and technology, the separation between the natural and the technological|cultural seems, as Deleuze|Guattari maintain, no longer tenable. This book thus aims at a radical re-thinking of these concepts from a Deleuzian|Guattarian (i.e. non-dualist and materialist) perspective.