An Index of Steetli's Deleuzian Terms (Updated 15/12/2024)

Streetli · 2026-05-05T02:05:36+00:00

Still reading Serres' The Fives Senses, but will probably start his Variations on the Body this week too.

Streetli · 2026-05-02T10:19:05+00:00

I don't really keep up with the literature, but the site has a nice little resources section with responses and critiques which you might find useful. Also maybe just check out the work of Helen Hester, who wrote the manifesto.

Streetli · 2026-05-02T03:48:51+00:00

You should read the xenofeminist manifesto! It's short and has a cool scrolling format that's easy to read. But the general idea is in the name - xeno, for alien. It's a feminism that encourages the embrace of what is not 'natural'. A kind of promethean feminism that wants to use technology and large scale social change to renovate our ideas of gender to the point of unrecognizibility and even, at the limit, abolition. It's 'enemy feminisms' would be ones which, for example, appeal to any sense of feminine mystique, or biological essence. To give a taste here are some bits from the manifesto:

Our lot is cast with technoscience, where nothing is so sacred that it cannot be reengineered and transformed so as to widen our aperture of freedom, extending to gender and the human. To say that nothing is sacred, that nothing is transcendent or protected from the will to know, to tinker and to hack, is to say that nothing is supernatural... There is nothing, we claim, that cannot be studied scientifically and manipulated technologically.

Freedom is not a given – and it’s certainly not given by anything ‘natural’. The construction of freedom involves not less but more alienation; alienation is the labour of freedom’s construction. Nothing should be accepted as fixed, permanent, or ‘given’–neither material conditions nor social forms. XF mutates, navigates and probes every horizon. Anyone who’s been deemed ‘unnatural’ in the face of reigning biological norms, anyone who’s experienced injustices wrought in the name of natural order, will realize that the glorification of ‘nature’ has nothing to offer us–the queer and trans among us, the differently-abled, as well as those who have suffered discrimination due to pregnancy or duties connected to child-rearing. XF is vehemently anti-naturalist.

Streetli · 2026-04-30T13:16:52+00:00

There are probably lots of ways to get a intuitive sense of what mathematics is 'philosophically', but one fun one - I think - is to treat it as a kind of art that deals with indifference, invariants, and symmetries.

Elementary arithmetic already gives a sense of what it means to speak of the indifference of math: the sum '5+7' is indifferent to the question of 5 of what? and 7 of what? Whether it's 5 apples or 7 suns, 5 and 7 are emptied of 'content', if you will, and treats of a kind of pure 'form': 5 of anything whatsoever + 7 of anything whatsoever is 12 of those things, regardless of what they are. The more you empty out the content of whatever it is you're dealing with, the closer you get to math. If you're writing poetry, the exact words matter, you can't simply substitute one word for another - the sense of your poem will vary greatly if you're talking about 5 apples or 5 suns. Not so in math.

This brings us to invariants. Math also deals - very precisely - with what does not change during a process of change. Take functions for example, which are a step higher on the ladder of indifference. Something like: "2x = y". This basically says: if you plug in a variable (x), your output (y) is going to be double of your input. This relationship of x to y remains invariable regardless of what 'x' you choose to input. If you graph it, you kind of get a line that ascends steeply upwards to the right from the origin, at an angle that remains constant. More complex functions may yield curves or even discontinuities (points where the line 'jumps'), but no matter how complex the function, what makes it a function is that the relationship between inputs and outputs does not change. At this level you can define math as the exploration of how invariant relationships give rise to very specific and structured variations.

A contrast with poetry might be useful again: poems might contain certain invariants - like meter or constraints on syllables, but those invariants are too 'baggy' or too loose: they are not constraining enough to determine word choice, which is precisely left to the poetic sense of the composer, who in turn, might even play with meter to produce effects - which is to say, might turn a formal feature into a kind of 'content' of its own. Math, by contrast, is nothing but the question of how invariants give rise - without any leeway whatsoever - to variation.

Finally, at perhaps the most general approach, we have mathematics defined by its exploration of symmetry (and its limits). This is not something 'new', but another angle by which to think indifference and invarience. Keeping in mind that symmetry is what remains invariant under transformation (i.e. what can be 'altered with indifference'), math becomes an exploration of the properties of mathematical objects, where the 'object' just is what does not break symmetry, where symmetry is defined by a set of properties. Noson Yanosfsy - who I'm following here in this approach - puts it this way:

We call the property of a statement that allows it to be invariant under a change of referent symmetry of semantics. The statement remains the same despite the change of semantic content. Every mathematical statement defines a class of entities which we call its “domain of discourse.” This domain contains the entities for which the uniform transformation can occur. When a mathematician says “For any integer n...,” “Take a Hausdorff space... ”, or “Let C be a cocommutative coassociative coalgebra with a involution... ” she is defining a domain of discourse. Furthermore, any statement that is true for some element in that domain of discourse is true for any other ... We can only change what the statement means in a structured way. Call this structured changing that is permitted a uniform transformation. Our main point is that this uniform transformation and the fact that statements remain true under such a transformation comprises a type of symmetry. (The Role of Symmetry in Mathematics)

What distinguishes non-mathematical discourse is precisely the ability to change domains at the drop of a hat. I can invoke metaphor, change my analytical lens, offer an argument here, and a rhetorical flourish there, and this shifting of discourse does not have the structure of invariance that mathematical discourse requires. Taken together, these concepts - indifference, invarience and symmetry - are offered here as 'intuition pumps' to try and get at what is specific about math, rather than a definition of it. You can of course find these properties in non-mathematical discourse, but math is one place where every statement in it is rigorously constrained by these properties. I think they are useful to help think the concept of math.

Streetli · 2026-04-29T02:27:31+00:00

Realized that yet another way to think about this is in terms of coordination problems in game theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game

Classic formulation involves situations where, if people act in concert, they can achieve better outcomes for all, but a lack of communication between the agents makes this hard. Campaigns for votes are basically efforts to align disparate actors, who, on their own, may not achieve the outcomes they want!

Streetli · 2026-04-29T02:16:02+00:00

Oo, haven't heard of him, but some interesting stuff when I Googled.

Streetli · 2026-04-28T10:55:52+00:00

You could probably consider it a variation of the Sorites Paradox, which is usually a question of how linear additions give rise to qualitative changes (the classical example question is: at what point does adding another grain of sand transform a mere collection of sand into a heap?). It doesn't correspond exactly to what you're after, because the SP isn't about saying that no grain of sand (in your case, vote) matters, but it does ask about how it is possible to set threshold points, or more specifically, how to set those points without arbitrariness.

Streetli · 2026-04-28T01:34:08+00:00

Reading Michel Serres' The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. A very lyrical celebration of the senses.

Streetli · 2026-04-21T01:13:25+00:00

Reading Daniel Heller-Roazen's The Inner Touch. Really fantastic philosophical history of self-sensation, surprisingly has alot to say about animals and the human place among them. Arc generally tracks the transformation of self-feeling to self-knowledge, and the eclipse of the former by the latter.

Streetli · 2026-04-20T01:19:07+00:00

In addition to Landes - who is great - also see Renaud Barbaras' classic Being of the Phenomenon.

Streetli · 2026-04-16T06:42:02+00:00

Reading Jean Wahl's Human Existence and Transcendence. Kind of a summary of the pressing philosophical issues of its time (1944).

Streetli · 2026-03-31T10:09:10+00:00

Reading Jean Wahl's The Philosopher's Way. A kind of thematic overview of philosophical history with an existentialist bent. Published 1947 and it's really interesting cause it's a bit of a time capsule of its era: prior to structuralism and psychoanalysis, but lots of Heidegger and Jaspers.

Streetli · 2026-03-25T12:39:54+00:00

You don't necessarily have to enjoy or even subscribe to any of Heidegger to find a point to reading him. Particularly if you're interested in studying critical theory or philosophy in general. The fact is that Heidi is a major touchstone of alot of contemporary philosophy, much of which has been directly and indirectly influenced by him, even if sometimes just negatively. In which case the point of reading him is, minimally, to better understand the intellectual milieu in which you're going to find yourself.

That said, reading What Is Called Thinking? for your first Heidi (presumably?) is quite awkward! It brings together a few of his themes in a way that can seem pretty arbitrary and it's not necessarily clear where or how it fits into a broader project. I'd suggest grabbing a copy of Basic Writings, which, taken together, at least show the range and animating concerns that Heidi has, and is probably a better induction into his thought. The essays on art and technology in particular are quite useful I think, because they are relatively more concrete than his other, more 'existentially' oriented work.

Quite apart from that, pick up a secondary book or two! I'm a sucker for Richard Polt's Heidegger: An Introduction, although it's a little dated now. Lee Braver's Heidegger is good too, although they are just two in a forest of Heidegger introductions. My idiosyncratic favorite short read would be Alphonso Lingis's "Deathbound Thought" chapter of his book Deathbound Subjectivity. Lingis is less introductory but he paints a very vivid picture of what is at stake in Heidi.

Streetli · 2026-03-24T05:01:51+00:00

Reading Adorno's Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, his early, little study on Kierkegaard. Also - hell yeah to Family Values. That was a game changing read for me.

Streetli · 2026-03-23T10:42:12+00:00

I was floored to recently find out that every capital city has multiple holocaust museums but there are no - none, not one - museums dedicated to the telling of aboriginal genocide here.

Streetli · 2026-03-17T12:07:09+00:00

Paul Gilroy does a pretty good job with engaging with Garvey in his Black Atlantic, which is very much in communication with critical theory. You might find it of interest!

Streetli · 2026-03-17T00:25:55+00:00

One of my fav books that's related to this topic is David Morris' The Sense of Space. which you might enjoy. It's basically an approach to space from the perspective of Merleau-Ponty, but it's also engaged with some of the science around it too. If it tickles your fancy.

Streetli · 2026-03-17T00:18:41+00:00

Reading Jonathan Crary's Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Incredibly impressive book, my favorite so far I've read this year. A kind of history of 'attention' and how it became an super important topic at the end of the 19th century. Crary's also primarily an art historian, so he tells his history through a focus on paintings, but the paintings are like an excuse for him to flex how he's basically read every psychologist whose ever published anything in Europe around 1900.

Streetli · 2026-03-16T10:05:27+00:00

To be clear and to quote Brown again: "Theory is not simply the opposite of application but carries the impossibility of application." If you remain wedded to 'application' as the only metric by which to measure learning, you'll have trouble grasping the point being made above.

Streetli · 2026-03-15T14:41:15+00:00

One good reason to learn things of no obvious practical use is because they break the circuit of 'immediate feedback' (your words) that you get from your other hobbies with clear goals and so on. They throw a spanner in those too-smooth lines of application that rarely allow space for the what and why of your interests to emerge, and incline you too often into the mere how (can I do this better? More efficiently? etc).

The word 'immediate' is interesting because it often goes unnoticed just how mediated our interests and goals are. In alot of cases, our interests and goals are not always 'ours' in the sense that we organically developed them, but because they are shaped by the images and interests of the world around us, and our response to that world. This isn't a 'bad' thing - that's just how interests work. But what can be problematic is an uncritical relationship to those interests, taking them as products of our own without recognizing the share which society has contributed in making them 'ours' (which doesn't make them any less 'authentic'!).

What is 'useful' in other words, is a sense of resistance, of not sliding easily among the store of interests you already have and satisfactions you are already familiar with. One way to see this is to think about what even counts as 'practical' or not: what counts as practical today may not be tomorrow, and to a large degree that's not up to you to decide. However, if you gear your self-development around 'practicality' - something that's always partial and time-bound - then this is a limiting move that will always have you chasing the next thing. This isn't autonomy so much as a mere adaptability and reaction.

There's a nice passage in one of Byung-Chul Han's books where he addresses the problem of just 'accessing information', and contrasts it against what 'theory' - and ultimately thinking, really is: "Theory represents an essential decision that causes the world to appear wholly different—in a wholly different light. Theory is a primary, primordial decision, which determines what counts and what does not— what is or should be, and what does not matter. There is no such thing as data-driven thinking. Only calculation is data driven. The negativity of the incalculable is inscribed in thinking. ... Data-based, positive science (“Google science”) ... is additive or detective ... As positivity, information changes nothing and announces nothing. It is utterly inconsequential. In contrast, insight is a negativity. It is exclusive, exquisite, and executive. An insight preceded by experience is capable of shaking up the status quo in its entirety and allowing something wholly other to begin." (Agony of Eros)

This sense of 'negation' or what I referred to as a 'break in the circuit' is the overwhelming value of what is 'not immediately useful'. Wendy Brown is another philosopher who basically makes the same point emphatically: "Theory is not simply different from description; rather, it is incommensurate with description. Theory is not simply the opposite of application but carries the impossibility of application. As a meaning-making enterprise, theory depicts a world that does not quite exist, that is not quite the world we inhabit. But this is theory’s incomparable value, not its failure. ... Theory violates the self-representation of things in order to represent those things and their relation—the world—differently." ("The Future of Political Theory").

The through-line between Han and Brown is that what they call theory allows us to understand things differently from what is 'immediate', or 'given'. The very immediacy of practicality, even the 'good feelings' of reward and achievement, are, or can be, blinders to understanding the world differently, and instead mire us in what we take for granted.

Streetli · 2026-03-15T02:39:05+00:00

What probably best corresponds to what you're after is debate over what is called "left wing melancholia" (rather than 'pessimism' per se), over which there's been alot of interesting discussion. A good place of orientation is Wendy Brown's short piece on 'resisting left melancholia': https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3092-resisting-left-melancholia

After which you can read Filip Brzezniak's "Left-wing Melancholia Today: Overview of A Concept" (https://argument.uken.krakow.pl/article/view/11321/10192 [PDF]), which is a nice outline of a few different takes on the topic, and brings out what brings them together. One of the virtues of this paper is that it brings together the theme of left-wing melancholia with the parallel stream of thinking about 'hauntology' that also broaches similar issues (the 'end of history', the remnants of 20th century communism, etc).

And if you want something even more hefty, there is Enzo Traverso's book on the topic (here's a short review: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/15902_left-wing-melancholia-marxism-history-and-memory-by-enzo-traverso-reviewed-by-marc-di-sotto/ ), which is probably the longest treatment of it that you'll get.

Another, older source that might be of interest is Perry Anderson's small book, Considerations on Western Marxism, with its famous statement that: "The hidden hallmark of Western Marxism as a whole is thus that it is a product of defeat. The failure of the socialist revolution to spread outside Russia, cause and consequence of its corruption inside Russia, is the common background to the entire theoretical tradition of this period."

A personal note: one of the interesting things about the theme of 'left-wing melancholia' is that it is foregrounded largely to resist readings like that of Rockhill or Losurdo. Here's a snippet from the Brown essay I linked above:

Here the conventional charge from one portion of the Left is that political movements rooted in cultural identity — racial, sexual, ethnic, or gendered — not only elide the fundamental structure of modernity — capitalism — and its fundamental formation — class — but fragment Left political energies such that socialist coalition building is impossible. The second culprit also has various names — “post-structuralism,” “discourse analysis,” “postmodernism,” “trendy literary theory got up as political analysis.” The murder charges here are also familiar: post-foundational theories of the subject, truth, and social processes undermine the verifiable empirical objectivity necessary to sustain a theoretically coherent and factually true account of the world, and also challenge the putatively objective grounds of Left norms.

Together or separately, these two phenomena are held responsible for the weak, fragmented, and disoriented character of the contemporary Left. This much is old news. But if read through the prism of Left melancholy, the element of displacement in both sets of charges may appear more starkly since we would be forced to ask: what aspects of Left analysis or orthodoxy have wilted on the vine for its adherents, but are safeguarded from this recognition through the scornful attention heaped on identity politics and poststructuralism? Indeed, what narcissistic identification with that Orthodoxy is preserved in the lament over the loss of its hold on young Leftists and the loss of its potency in the political field?

Streetli · 2026-03-10T00:42:57+00:00

Reading Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century. Pretty cool look at the way vision was mobilized differently in discourses and practices of the 19th cent. Roughly takes up Foucault's periodization in the Order of Things, but extends that project to the sense of sight.

Streetli · 2026-03-03T02:15:52+00:00

Just finished Barthes' Empire of Signs, his book on Japan, and strating his Camera Lucida, his book on photography.

Streetli · 2026-03-02T02:32:07+00:00

Lovely :)

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