Unit:
Falulty of PhilosophyLibrary of the School of Philosophy
Author:
Gounari Sotiria-Ismini
Dissertation committee:
Γεράσιμος Κακολύρης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Φιλοσοφίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Ασημίνα Καραβαντά, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Κανάκης Λελεδάκης, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Dorothea Olkowski, Διακεκριμένη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Φιλοσοφίας Πανεπιστήμιο Κολοράντο, Κολοράντο Σπρινγκς
Ιωάννης Πρελορέντζος, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Φιλοσοφίας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Αριστοτέλης Στυλιανού, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικών Επιστημών, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης
Nathan Widder, Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικής, Διεθνών Σχέσεων και Φιλοσοφίας, Royal Holloway, Πανεπιστήμιο του Λονδίνου
Original Title:
The Concept of Affect through the Lens of Intensity and Becoming: A Philosophical Inquiry in Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari
Translated title:
The Concept of Affect through the Lens of Intensity and Becoming: A Philosophical Inquiry in Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari
Summary:
In the current dissertation, I analyze the concept of affect as it appears in the philosophies of Baruch Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. After putting forward the Spinozian conception of affect as a modification of immanent substance, I explore the repercussions of affect being a variation of intensity in Deleuze and Guattari’s work. Intensity, or difference according to Deleuze and Guattari, is a metaphysical element that appears in a triadic scheme along the virtual and the actual. Intensity denotes a power of producing novelty by virtue of disjunctively synthesizing heterogeneities under its characteristic of tending towards a limit. In aesthetics, intensity characterizes the ever-receding shared genetic moment of sensibility and ideality as the limit of both. Following the above, affect denotes a variation of the genetic limit of sensibility and ideality under sensibility’s creative function. It is analyzed as being defined in reference to an intensive zero point in which the repetition of habit is conditioned by the novelty of Deleuze’s third synthesis of time, Death, where the unity of actual, extended entities appears dissolved into the singularities from which it arises. Affect is thus understood as a primary novelty or difference that conditions the appearance of repetitive, habitual ways of being. The ethical significance of affect is subsequently considered as related to what Deleuze and Guattari name becoming-minor. This correlation follows directly by the metaphysics of intensity as an exposition of the genetic preconditions of actual unified entities and that exposes the dynamism underlying seemingly unified objects and subjects by connecting them to the genetic processes by which they came to be. Finally, I analyze the synthesizing function of affect as combining the in-itself-ness of difference and the Humean principle of the externality of relations. Neither interior nor exterior affect exists at the middle point, where novelty produces new relations and their corresponding terms. The association of affect and emotions is evaluated as relating to their joint de-subjectifying function which is best exemplified in the affirmative functions of pain and defacialization. Passing from its immanent function in Spinoza to its metahuman function in Deleuze and Guattari affect denotes the function of dynamism, novelty and creation.
Main subject category:
Philosophy - Psychology
Keywords:
Affect, intensity, becoming, minority
Number of references:
765
File:
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Gounari, S.I., PhD Thesis.pdf
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File access is restricted until 2025-07-10.
