<div>Compelled by converging research in the natural sciences suggesting the stratigraphic nature of time, I argue for a temporal approach to the venerable problem of synthesis in evolutionary theory. Geneticist and pioneer of the Modern Synthesis (MS), Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975), constructed one of the most powerful synthesis arguments in the history of evolutionary biology in the classic “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” (1973). I argue that nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of time, such that the problem of evolutionary time plays a powerful role in making sense of the conceptual architecture of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). The EES offers a strong alternative to the temporal and causal idealizations operating at the hardened core of the MS. I create the philosophical concept of stratigraphic time to strengthen connections between the four problem agendas or “causal catchalls” structuring the new synthesis: (1) developmental plasticity, (2) developmental bias, (3) inclusive inheritance, and (4) niche construction (Laland 2015 et al.). The dissertation is driven by two critical arguments (Chapters 1-3) concerning the subordination of time to process, and two constructive arguments (Chapters 4 and 5) concerning the nature of evolutionary time, which together attest to the conceptual strength of a temporal approach to the multiplicity of evolutionary problems pursued by the EES, and especially the connections between them. </div><div><br></div><div>Chapter 1, “Embracing the Problematic Structure of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” explicates and evaluates the core assumptions of the EES in contrast with those of the MS, which has served as the dominant conceptual framework for evolutionary science and theory since the early twentieth century. Chapter 2, “Deep Time: The Forgotten Frontier,” critically argues that evolutionary time has been subordinated to evolutionary process, that the problem of evolutionary time must be revived after its eclipse at the origin of evolutionary theory, especially due to Darwin’s unnecessarily strict commitments to gradualism, adaptationism, and to the preeminence of natural selection. Chapter 3, “The Chronometric Subordination of Time to Movement in Philosophy, Science, and Society,” critically argues that the subordination of evolutionary time to process is primed by the chronometrically facilitated subordination of time to movement, what mathematician, physicist, and philosopher of science Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) called an unconscious opportunism in philosophical and scientific thought. The constructive arguments unfolded in Chapter 4, “The Continuous Variation of Evolutionary Contingency,” and Chapter 5, “Stratigraphic Time: The Synthesis of Deep and Developmental Rhythms,” attempt to respect causal thinking while conceptualizing evolutionary processes not according to causal laws but rather according to passive and active temporal syntheses (or modes of repetition), effectively delimiting causal thinking to a provisional conceptualization. Stratigraphic time enables conceptualization of the multiplicity of evolutionary process, driven by a new concept of evolutionary contingency. I argue that the roles of chance and causation in the EES are strengthened by concepts of difference and repetition, akin to the conceptual roles played by arrows and cycles of time in the formation of geological and evolutionary thought. These critical and constructive arguments are guided by Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of time, which he conceptualizes under the rubric of repetition. The three passive and active temporal syntheses, or modes of repetition, Deleuze creates to think the nature of repetition provide conceptual tools for evolutionary synthesis through stratigraphic time. </div><div><br></div>

This dissertation is based on the observation that Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" has become a popular reference in contemporary culture. Not only in the field of literary scholarship but also in the realm of art, political theory and philosophy, it is employed as an example of authentic resistance to power, a counter-intuitive politics that finds its strength in withdrawal, inaction, and inscrutability. The thesis examines the reasons and motives that drive literary scholars, artists and philosophers to read, interpret and use the story in such a way. It does so by analyzing the nature of and reoccurring patterns in Bartleby Industry, the enormous bulk of academic scholarship devoted to the story. It observes how the story is made use of outside of literary scholarship by disciplines, such as art and philosophy, that are not primarily concerned with the literary complexity of the story but use it to work on their own problems of politics and ethics. It pays special attention to its popularity among influential Postmarxist philosophers, namely Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze. As the presence of "Bartleby" in the realm of philosophy has to do with a particular function literature performs in that field, in these chapters "Bartleby" becomes more of a guiding thread in order to...

The main topic of this diploma thesis is the relationship of movie and human perception. Movie is a purely technical medium that moves images for the first time. The starting point of the work is the book written by French cultural theorist Paul Virilio and his reflections on film and technology. Virilio's position is negative in many ways due to cinematography. He blames technology for horrors inflicted during world wars. Cinematography is guilty of a revolution of perception that leads to the decomposition of the vision and the disintegration of the classical dimensions of space and time. In my work Virilio's views are confronted with the reflections of Virilio's contemporary, also the French theorist, Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze understands movie in many ways differently than Virilio. Also his opinion on the technique is quite different. The movie after World War II is a medium that no longer attempts to imitate natural perception. Such film can cause a shock to the audience. This shock opens up new possibilities of thinking and perception, and the viewer gains the opportunity to achieve a specific spiritual life through a movie.

No description available.

Este estudio examina la teoría de la imagen-tiempo de Gilles Deleuze tal como queda representada en Los adioses (2017), con el propósito de plantear la eterna recurrencia del pasado en la vida de la escritora mexicana Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974). Además, explora las diferentes técnicas de imagen-tiempo que utiliza Beristáin tales como la yuxtaposición entre las temporalidades del pasado, presente y futuro que conforman las respectivas memorias del pasado y que, al ser combinadas con las vivencias del presente, representan una culminación de experiencias que permiten una nueva perspectiva del pasado. Con cada nueva perspectiva se presenta una dinámica representación de emociones y sensaciones que causan un choque afectivo y por ende hacen manifiesto el constante cambio a la otredad de la escritora.

The following remarks are intended as philosophical comments on Gilles Deleuze’s groundbreaking reflections on a control society emerging at the end of the 20th century (cf. Deleuze 1992). Following Foucault, Deleuze’s interpretations of the ‘contemporary’ socio-technological transformations are mostly of a spatio-technical nature; the aim of this article is to complement his diagnosis with a time-philosophical analysis. Here, the guiding question is how to best characterize the time-political dimension of the new forms of social (“apprenticeships and permanent training”) and economic control, which has only further increased with the financialization of the 21st century (“Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt”) (1992: 6-7). Deleuze’s text already contains a number of clues that are relevant in this context, for example his references to the work of the dromonihilist Paul Virilio, specifically to the “ultrarapid forms of free-floating control” (1992: 4) that the latter outlined. Behind the acceleration paradigm sketched out by Virilio, however, we recognize an explanatory model of a different temporality, that is, both a different model of explanation and a different model of time. According to our working hypothesis, complex societies or societies that, under the influence of algorithms and computer-based infrastructures, are temporally complex can no longer be understood from the perspective of the present. The type of economy that Deleuze subsumed under the concept of ‘control society’ corresponds to a logic that is no longer centered on the present or the contemporary. Rather, under the digital technological conditions of the 21st century, control turns out to be time control and control of (as well as from) the future.

In his “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, which was written 30 years ago in 2020, Gilles Deleuze leaves us with the diagnosis that a profound transformation of society and capitalism has taken place: having left behind the disciplinary societies, which Foucault analysed (cf. Foucault 1975), after World War II, we are now living in societies of control that are inseparably connected to a new form of capitalism (cf. Deleuze 1992: 3-4, 6). This transformation of society has led to a “generalized crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure” (Deleuze 1992: 3-4) which were being reshaped through various reforms, resulting in “the installation of the new forces” (1992: 4), that is, the “progressive and dispersed installation of a new system of domination” (1992: 7). Apparently, Deleuze’s clairvoyant idea of the society of control seems to have come true: we no longer need to imagine science fiction, since contemporary reality is already structured by digitised control mechanisms of multiple sorts and characters. Many of our social, economic, and political actions in both public and private everyday life are at least influenced or even caused by algorithms. Several of these algorithms may make our lives more convenient, especially in terms of the possibilities of the Internet, such as deterritorialised connection, access to information, and shared technological knowledge. However, in the “age of algorithm” (Sunstein 2017: 3), most areas of digitised reality based on ‘big data’, like social media, financial markets, smart technologies, or artificial intelligence systems are characterised by anonymity, non-transparency, and undemocratic structures which appear like asymmetrical mechanisms for controlling individuals. The function of algorithms enables all kinds of political and private organisations, like companies and governments, to evaluate patterns of individual behaviour and actions and to handle them as impersonal, general, and – in the Deleuzean idiom – dividualised facets of reality (cf. Baranzoni 2016: 45-46): a reality that is rather to be calculated in capitalistic terms than to be created and to be designed by human beings themselves (e.g. as political actors).

In speaking of the society of control, new qualities of current social conditions are usually addressed in a diffuse rather than precise manner. Quite often, e.g. within surveillance studies, it is associated with technologies modelled after the fiction of god-like omnipotence of visual surveillance (cf. Gehring 2017). The relevance of a power of cybernetics – according to Wiener, the science of systemic control – which resonates in the concept of control, refers to normally invisible operations of technical systems that permanently evaluate data streams according to discursively determined parameters and in connection with commercial interests (cf. Wiener 1948).

Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on Control Societies” functions as an index of epochal change. It opens with an invocation of the past, situating Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power in the nineteenth century, and has been read as theorization of the present, of the shifts in power in the late twentieth century. What, however, of its legacy? Or its future? It seems that now, close to thirty years after its publication, it is possible to ask two series of questions of this notion of control. First, where are we with control now?

The present diploma thesis "Claude Simon. Introduction and interpretation" is philosophical interpretation of the novels of the French writer Claude Simon, the Nobel prize winner for literature in 1985, whose work has been in the Czech academic field neglected theme. My interpretation is based on the philosophy of G. Deleuze and according to him I understand Simon's work like a rhizome, that is like decentralized heterogenous links, multiplicities and lines which are not subjects to any structural model. In my interpretation I start with novel Le Vent (The Wind) from 1957, because it's a text in which are being manifest fundamental themes of Simon's poetic such as are event nature of the fiction world or the lost of transcendence and its transformation into immanence of life affairs. The analysis of the novel Le Vent makes possible to pass continuosly and frequently to Simon's other novels (Histoire, Les Gèorgiques, Le Palace, L'Herbe, La Route des Flandres). The aim of the diploma thesis is to reach coherent interpretation of the Simon's work.