This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable (...) laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy? (shrink)

This article discusses Michel Serres's topological thinking and his approach to space and time from a film studies perspective, specifically looking at connections between Serresian philosophy and the work of Christopher Nolan, using Dunkirk (2017) as an example of folded time. The article provides a selective overview of Serres's topological thinking, which opposes a geometrical approach to space and time, as well as indicating connections between Serresian thought and film studies more broadly. Serres makes frequent use of visual metaphors that (...) rely upon motion, which means discussing Serres's philosophy in relation to film can be a purposeful way to make sense of his topological thinking about spatialized time. Serresian philosophy can bring new ideas to film studies while discussion of Serres's thinking from a film studies perspective can help to visualize some of his philosophical ideas. The article considers similarities with, and distinctions from, Gilles Deleuze's understanding of time in cinema, which is modelled on the work of Henri Bergson. One essential difference is that Serres approaches topological time in relation to space whereas Deleuze only considers topological aspects to time through the virtual qualities of the non-spatialized time-image. Key aims of the article are to contribute to film studies through the application of Serresian thinking in relation to Dunkirk as well as offering a new approach to the recurrent themes of space and time in Nolan's work. The main objective is to present Serresian topological thinking as an alternative approach to space and time in film studies, which includes the capability to potentially complement or enhance ideas developed by Deleuze and Bergson. In keeping with Serresian philosophy this article pursues a new way of thinking about folded time in relation to film, based upon exploring new territory and synthesizing ideas rather than attempting to present a universal argument. (shrink)

The article explores the relationship between visual culture and the fight for visibility and attention in contemporary society. It draws on a concept of visual culture which not only sees the rising significance of the visual and the proliferation of images as its defining traits, but also the fact that, today, people are—to a much higher degree—both consumers as well as producers of images. Based on this definition, it is argued that in visually oriented communication and media societies, the anthropologically (...) fundamental need for attention manifests itself as a fight for visibility which takes on the form of ever more extreme forms of public self-display. Furthermore, a portrait of two social figures—the star and the voyeur—will serve as further analysis and description of the social trends which can be tied to the emergence of today's visual culture. The article will close by discussing attention and visibility in terms of inclusion and exclusion and by proposing an analytical model for differentiating four modes of existence in a visual culture. (shrink)

In this article we endeavor to show how the character Harlequin of Michel Serres embodies in his philosophy the conditions for the appearance of the new. In order to show it, we will first introduce Serres as the creator of characters and a philosopher of narrative. Then we will focus on Harlequin as the personification of a “third instruction”, the result of the mixing between humanities and the exact sciences. Last but not least, we will establish the relations between mixing (...) and invention as a condition for the creating of the new. (shrink)

This article is about ‘genogeographic’ maps produced by late-Soviet geneticists and published during post-Soviet time. It focuses on the visual and numerical techniques scientists used to project genetic data onto geographic space. Rather than discussing their representational character, I follow these visuals as ‘folded objects’, describing the layering and realigning of measurements and temporalities as well as the shifts in the practices and meanings of genetics. In the 1970s Soviet biological anthropologists transformed scattered data points by means of spatial statistics (...) into visually coherent maps for a ‘genogeographical atlas’, by interpolating data for the entire USSR territory. Computer-aided modelling rendered ‘populations’ as systemic entities and enacted specific cybernetic versions of population, evolution and difference. Tracing the history of their making helps one in understanding what these folded objects hold in store, in terms of data ranging from Russian imperial and colonial anthropology, through early Soviet traditions, to cold war technologies. Folded into those maps in intricate ways, they have co-shaped post-Soviet human genetics as an ever-active site for possible reinscriptions of difference. (shrink)

Freezers with biospecimen deposits became biobanks and later were networked at the pan-European level in 2013 under the Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure—European Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI-ERIC). Drawing on document analysis about the BBMRI-ERIC and multi-sited fieldwork with biobankers in Spain from a science and technology studies approach, we explore what biobanks are expected to do and become under the BBMRI-ERIC framework, and how infrastructural transitions promote particular transformations in biobanking practices. The primary purpose of biobanks in Europe is (...) presented as being to become mediators in contemporary biomedical research (global sharing nodes) distribution, and distributed nodes of samples and their associated data. We argue that infrastructural transitions are complicated and heterogeneous, giving rise to unattended local concerns on adjusting their practices to fit into the BBMRI-ERIC framework, even for non-members, as the case of Spain illustrates, where “old practices” of collection and storage are questioned. In this article, we aim to encourage qualitative studies to explore the lags between pan-European policies and prospects, different contextual interpretations, and biobanking reconfigurations as an opportunity to explore what that lag is made of (e.g. tensions with “old practices,” unresolved conflicts with the national agendas, reservations on a possible centralization of the biobanking practices by regional biobanks, lack of funding, etc.). Such research could enrich not only policy guidance, but also the understanding of technoscientific infrastructures’ scalability. (shrink)