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Theorizing, Deleuzian-style

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There is a difference between theory and theorizing. Christopher Collinge discusses the components of a Deleuzian theory of theorizing.

Image courtesy of interviewee. April 11, 2024

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This video video discusses the nature of theory and theorizing, drawing particularly from the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze. It begins by defining theory as a web of concepts that addresses problems and guides future research, noting that it often appears static, like a finished piece of work. The author emphasizes a distinction between "theory," which is a settled concept, and "theorizing," which refers to the dynamic process of developing ideas. This video video captures the complexity of theorizing by referencing the personal experiences and inspiration that contribute to the development of theories, contrasting the lively and chaotic process of theorizing with the final, more rigorous form of a theory. It also discusses Deleuze's philosophical perspective, which focuses on difference rather than fixed identities and how his ideas resonate with broader philosophical movements, such as post-structuralism. Key themes include the interplay between past influences on a theory and its future implications, as well as a critique of conventional methodology in academia, suggesting that theorizing should be viewed as an organic process rather than a formulaic procedure. The author hopes to encourage a more nuanced understanding of theorizing as a series of events that is interconnected with the lived experiences of theorists. Overall, the paper proposes that Deleuze's insights can inform a more dynamic and life-like conception of theorizing in contrast to traditional, rigid academic approaches.

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Theory is most people would understand

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what theory was to some degree.

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Uh, I mean, the way

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that I've suggested it is in this paper is, a web

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of concepts that, sort of express a, a, a,

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a preoccupation on the part of a, of an academic

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or, anybody, not an academic,

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a meteorologist, you know, whoever.

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And, or, somebody,

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with a conspiracy theory even maybe.

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Um, and then, something which

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relates different aspects of a problem together,

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but also something that, guides future research.

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Um, so there are different ways in which theory functions,

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but theory tends to be rather static

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and, like a, almost like a finished ar article, whereas,

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and sometimes it's sort

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of hides the process of theorizing.

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Um, so when I

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was at a conference in, Florida, some time ago,

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I noticed that people who present their theories quite often

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start with a kind of biography

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for the theory itself, where it came from.

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And they try

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and set the scene by explaining, as I am doing now,

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why they came up with the theory that they did.

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Uh, so I thought theories face in two directions.

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They face forwards towards a topic,

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but quite often they also face sort

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of backwards towards their own genesis.

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So the question I asked was, what is the relationship

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between the theory as it points forward?

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And, its reference backwards to its own genesis?

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And the genesis of a theory, you might call that theorizing.

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It's the becoming of a theory.

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It's the way in which things emerge

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over time in a series of events.

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Um, so the, that would be the difference between theory

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and theorizing, rather settled thing that actually exists.

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And on the other hand, a kind of, process

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or sequence of events which are alive, not dead,

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and which, seem to somehow grow out

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of, a realm of unstated

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sort of invisible assumptions, knowledge, experience,

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which is referred to by Ulus as the virtual.

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So the virtual is something that's sort

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of waiting to happen.

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And then there's the actual, which has happened,

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and probably it's a bit more boring when it's happened than,

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you know, when we just about are having it happening.

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One of the sort

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of undercurrent in doulas is thought is about life.

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And of course, theory finds it quite hard to capture life.

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Uh, but

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We know what life is like.

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It's something that unfolds in a kind of precipitous,

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accidental quite often, kind of chaotic,

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slightly dangerous way.

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Um, and so, you know, the, the process

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of theorizing is not neat and tidy.

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It's, it's full of all these things like, you know,

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like, drinking coffee, you know, arguing

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with your mates, arguing with books, but,

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but more to the point really remembering

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and reliving beautiful experiences

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with your friends conversations in libraries.

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Um, one of the things that I was

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remembering in writing this article was, was this book,

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which, I read as a student.

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Uh, and it's almo.

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There's almost nothing written on this topic.

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Uh, and, although I did meet Alan Blum once,

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who wrote this book, and, yeah, I, I, so, you know,

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I was kind of inspired.

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So the, this process of being inspired is life.

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And of course, when you've written it, then it's just a,

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a lump of wood.

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Delos was a French philosopher who,

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died in about 1994.

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Uh, I say about, lemme just check.

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Yes, he died in, in 1995.

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Um, but he, he was one of a, a sort of

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group network of French philosophers

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after the second World War.

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His work was mainly in the 1950s, up to the 1990s.

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Um, but you might link his work with,

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Fuko or Deida

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or, there was a, there was a whole bunch of them

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around at that time.

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Um, Leo Todd for example,

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or ard, you know, there's quite a few of them.

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But, he, his thinking was rather different to them.

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I mean, they're sometimes referred to as post-structuralist

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philosophers, and they've had a massive impact,

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particularly Fuco, but, but the others,

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and they go through different phases,

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of being influential.

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Um, but Ulus was different in,

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in some ways because whilst those other thinkers, Fuco,

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deida, they were obsessed with language, really.

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Uh, I'd say that Delos was not obsessed

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with language, actually.

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He was much more interested in, experience

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in, sort of sensuous experience and,

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and in the impact that, what he, what he referred to

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as pre reflective encounters with force.

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So forces working in our lives, you know, the, the forces

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of things intersecting.

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Uh, there's some imagery of, of the, of the knife

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slicing, you know, which is an event.

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Uh, the knife that slices is an event.

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So, I mean, it's a fantastic image of, of something,

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the, the event of something that happens on the surface

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of objects that intersect.

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Uh, so that's not about language, primarily,

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that's about other things.

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Um, whereas somebody like Fuko, for example, is,

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it is all about discourse language,

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language shaping reality.

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So I, that's why I think Duluths has a kind of advantage.

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Um, I mean, he's influenced by structuralism, you know,

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the big structuralism of people like Claude Levy Strauss

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and, and Louis Altus and so on.

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But he, and structuralism is a paradigm

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that comes from language, by the way.

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But, you, you know, so,

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hi, his thinking is different.

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So then there's the question of how he relates to guitar.

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So Guitar, Delos

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and Qatari wrote together,

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the guitar was a psychoanalyst, and Delos was a philosopher.

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And I think what happened was that Delos found

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guitar's thinking, animating.

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He found it re a release

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to some degree from the philosophical,

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straight jacket of, of academia.

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And so the, the work that he does with Qatari

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as more wild

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and wacky than the work that he does with on his own,

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you know, but,

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but in this paper, I do try to go back

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to the work he does on his own, which is two works.

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One, one called Difference in Repetition, and,

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and the other called, the, what was that called?

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The, the, what is philosophy? That's it. Yeah.

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What is philosophy?

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So, so, that the,

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that was first one was at the more, at the beginning

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of his career, what is

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philosophy's more at the end of his career.

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Um, no disrespect to Felix Qatari,

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but, I thought it'd be useful just to try

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and disentangle the two a little bit also though,

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because, the work that they did together has been dead,

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trendy and fashionable.

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Um, like, well,

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there are various texts that they did together.

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Um, and, I thought it would be good to go back

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to de Lewis's work on his own and to try

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and make sense of that.

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Delos does share in common the interest

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and commitment to what those philosophers at

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that time called difference.

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Um, and the idea is to get away from,

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a sort of primordial essence to things

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that everything has a, a, an identity that's

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fixed in it in some way.

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And the idea was to go back behind identity

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and focus on difference.

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Um, and it's this rather mysterious idea that

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differences proceed, proceed identities,

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and,

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and, so it's, it's,

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it's somehow like that knife slicing, you know, to create

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two split parts.

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So the, the difference is like, it is a sort of splicing,

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but it's also a kind of emergence out

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of nothing, of things.

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Um, and there are different treatments of difference.

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So, well, difference is inherently differential

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and, so different treatments of difference by,

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Deida who spends a lot of time talking about this,

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and, and by Delos and by others,

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and that to some extent, they're reacting.

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All of them are reacting to the, sort of to Plato

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and to the Greek philosophers who focused on identity

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and on this idea of a kind of

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transcendent identity in some other plane, you know,

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the pure forms.

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And that we are merely projections of this,

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from this realm of pure forms, you know, that you encounter,

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if you leave the, the, the cave where we're,

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we are all living in a deluded world of, of cave,

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inside the cave, but outside that,

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there are the pure forms, God-like forms

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that shaped reality.

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Uh, so they were reacting against that idea

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and suggesting that difference comes first,

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which is an idea they sort of get from Hagel,

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because in the end, Hagel says something very like that,

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in his logic.

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So, so theorizing, well,

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Delos talks about philosophy.

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So what is philosophy? I, I focus particularly on that book.

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Um, but if we're talking about processes

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and things becoming, then where does theory become?

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And, so actually Delos doesn't write about theory.

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He writes about philosophy,

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but you can quite easily see how it's applicable

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to theory and theorizing.

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So the con contribution I was trying to make in a way was

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to try and wrench de lu's thinking in the direction of,

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of theorizing

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and, you know, to, to show the potential it has

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for producing a more lively

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viewpoint on the worker of theorizing.

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Uh, by the way, there's also, in the back of my mind, the

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resistance to, the normal treatment

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of theorizing in methodology, philosophical methodology.

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So what you get are textbooks, which are like recipe books,

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which tell you how to do theorizing. And so, you know, you

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Form a, you, you have a hypo, you have a concept,

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you have a hypothesis, you collect data, you know,

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this is a deductive, inductive approach and, and so on.

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So this, the, the idea to behind the paper was to try

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and break away from the textbook, the cookbook approach to

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theorizing, and to try

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and think of it as a real thing that happens in the world

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that people actually do, rather than something

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that should conform to a, a, a, a sort of guidebook

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or a rule book given to you by the methodology teachers.

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And I thought we could use Ulus to,

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to counteract those methodology teachers.

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So you have to try and extract, a kind of,

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almost like a framework from, from De Lu's work,

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which is what I tried to do.

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Um, and the good thing about Dilu is

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that he rather breaks away from

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and reacts against the dualistic picture of, of the world

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that you get from Descartes, which is as mind and matter.

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And he goes sort of to the side of Descartes,

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and he picks up on, on this guy Spinoza, who had a,

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a unitary monistic view of the world where mind

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and matter were part of one thing, which was called nature

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or God,

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and their sort of different emergent attributes from,

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from this one thing.

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Whereas Descartes had a, a sort

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of more theological view.

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God was over there. So mind

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and matter were separated from each other,

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radically separated, whereas for, Spinoza,

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they were mi they were unified.

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So then D Delos generates a, a model for

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how knowledge comes outta that.

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Uh, and it's through these encounters with,

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pre what's called pre reflective encounters with forces.

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Now, these are sort of sensuous sensible experiences,

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which are aesthetic like art,

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but they are sort of mute experiences,

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which force us somehow into the use

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of language and concepts.

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And, and so the model is a circular model

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that comes outta dilu in both books,

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both difference and repetition.

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And what is philosophy.

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You get the same model of, knowledge

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and theorizing coming out of these experiences with,

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sort of pre reflective experiences with forces at work.

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And then, you know, then that's art.

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And then we go into a sort of philosophical phase

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where you encounter problems.

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And problems are a motivating thing in this framework

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that he provides.

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Um, and to solve problems, you come up with concepts.

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Uh, and so we have a web of concepts, and then at that

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Point, you start to e experience evidence and data,

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and you can relate that back.

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So you get a, a, a, a cycle of emergent

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and synthesizing, to arrive at a theory.

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So that's the cycle that they, that Duluth presents,

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and which I sort of reconstruct outta reading their,

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their work, his work.

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Um, and then, what I try to do is to use the,

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my own experience of the theorizing that I'm doing there to

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inform the theory that comes out.

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So the answer to the question is,

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what's the answer to the question?

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What is the connection between the theorizing

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and the theory is supposed to be, to some degree,

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exemplified in the way that I,

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you might use my own theorizing

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to inform the theory that comes out.

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And that is neatly set up at the end in the conclusions,

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you know, where I have all my key points assembled

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and dead and buried almost.

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Well, the, the hope is that the paper,

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this might be a, a, a, a hopeless hope,

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but the hope is that the paper might encourage people to

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think about theorizing as a series of events,

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as a living thing,

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and continue to look at it from different angles.

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Uh, I mean, the, the, the Allen Blum,

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I'm really plugging this book, you know, I, I,

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I must have shares in it or something.

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But the Alan Blum approach is to look at it, the,

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the language he would use would be ma maybe hermeneutics

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or Hier or something.

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But the approach that

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that is in this paper is obviously

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completely different to that.

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Um, although they, Sharon common a sort of interest in,

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friendship and dialogue

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and sort of tensions

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and, sort of alliances.

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But, but anyway, so the idea would be

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that people might look at it again, add to, to this

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and develop different perspectives on it.

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I mean, I can think of other angles on theorizing,

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but, you know, I, I don't need to do those.

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I've done this one.

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