Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida proposes a combined theory of consciousness, subjectivity, and agency stemming from analyses of junctures in Western philosophical and critical discourses that have significantly influenced the development of present-day understandings of these terms and a number of concepts to which they often are or can be linked, including: perception, identity, desire, well-being, mimesis, aesthetics, literacy, education, performance, and human rights. An overarching argument of this book is that subjectivity can be positively defined as a manifestation of ongoing relations among affecters and enablers of transversal processes that individuals and groups can purposefully mobilize to guide and alter experiences. In contrast to standard narratives, Reynolds and his collaborators reveal a mappable history of this idea in the folds and interstices of Western intellectual history as they show how the theories and methodologies of transversal poetics are themselves its byproducts.
'This book is a treasure trove of sparkling new ideas, new connections and new directions. In short, it is the perfect example of its own topic, namely transversality. It has a singular and distinctive voice, yet that voice is collectively and collaboratively enunciated so the one is always the many. It is a stunning performance that ranges the length and breadth of modernity and postmodernity.' - Ian Buchanan, Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, UK, and Editor, Deleuze Studies
'Bryan Reynolds and company have done it again. Here they use phenomenology, hermeneutics, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and "schizoanalysis" to cross various subjectivities. They explore gene-like (or virus-like) memes, unintentional mimicry, the "Shakespearean G-spot," its antitheatrical critics, the "naming-function," performance anxiety, hypochondria, masochism, cartography, panopticism, historiography, feral children, playground reforms, cannibalism, terrorism, civility, human rights, and more - in this wild ride through diverse theoretical frontiers.' - Mark Pizzato, Professor of Theatre, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, USA
'Bryan Reynolds and his collaborators have produced an intriguing and insightful work on the problems of consciousness, desire, subjectivity, and cognition. Transversal Subjects is a major intervention in contemporary theory.' - Robert Markley, Professor of English, University of Illinois, USA
'This collaborative book is a unique attempt at a synthesis of poststructuralist theories (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari) with more traditional interpretations of subjectivity in phenomenology and reader-response theories. Based on a wide range of texts from Shakespeare and Montaigne to philosophical and architectural responses to 9/11, it convincingly argues for the importance and reconfiguration of subjectivity as an experiential process and reflexive power.' - Martin Procházka, Professor of English, American and Comparative Literature, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
'Transversal Subjects takes on Félix Guattari's claim that "among the fogs and miasmas which obscure out fin de millénaire, the question of subjectivity is now returning as a leitmotif" and pushes it deeply into our post 9/11 present. The book taps with equal sprezzatura into theoretical, historical and artistic reservoirs, its diverse voices and arguments held together by a deep commitment to the subjunctive as a means to 'move' subjects and send them off onto transversal trajectories. The intellectual energy and the adventurous spirit of Transversal Subjects takes your mind back to the pleasures and the excitement of the playground; the maybe most communal of heterotopias. If your body can follow, so much the better!' - Hanjo Berressem, Professor of American Studies, University of Cologne, Germany
'Like intricate fractals and other paradoxical or nonsensical worlds, the corpus of Bryan Reynolds evolves by expanding from within. In Transversal Subjects, the recursive, (re-)iterative itinerary of Reynolds' work spreads tentacles into new territories, demonstrating once again that Reynolds' collaborative means of production performatively enacts the singular conceptual (non-)logic of transversality. This is synthetic, transdiscplinary thought in its most supple form, providing a powerful tool for contemporary interventions, opening spaces for colleagues and students alike to step up, step into, and perform the next becoming. "WELCOME to the machine."' - Paul A. Harris, Loyola Marymount University, USA; Co-Editor, SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Subjective Affects: Surveying with Husserl, Shakespeare, and Derrida into the Twenty-First Century; B.Reynolds (with additional dialogue by B.Reynolds and G.Light)
The Masochistic Quest of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Deleuze and Guattari to Transversal Poetics with(out) Baudrillard;
A.Bryx and B.Reynolds
The Cartographic Impulse: Certeau's Transversality, Foucault's Panoptic Discourse, Cusa's Empiricism, and Google's New World; J.Fitzpatrick and B.Reynolds
Fugitive Rehearsals: The Ferality of Kaspar Hauser, Playground Performances, and the Transversality of Children;
B.Reynolds and D.Sherman
Civilizing Subjects, or Not: Montaigne's Guide to Modernity, Agamben's Exception, and Human Rights after Derrida; A.KLosowska and B.Reynolds
Afterword: Subjects Matter; G.Genosko
Glossary of Transversal Terms
Notes on Collaborators
Index
BRYAN REYNOLDS is Professor of Drama and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, USA. He is the author of Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (2006), Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (2003), Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (2002), co-editor of Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage (2005), and co-editor of Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital (2000). He is also an internationally produced playwright and a director of theatre.
Description
Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after Derrida proposes a combined theory of consciousness, subjectivity, and agency stemming from analyses of junctures in Western philosophical and critical discourses that have significantly influenced the development of present-day understandings of these terms and a number of concepts to which they often are or can be linked, including: perception, identity, desire, well-being, mimesis, aesthetics, literacy, education, performance, and human rights. An overarching argument of this book is that subjectivity can be positively defined as a manifestation of ongoing relations among affecters and enablers of transversal processes that individuals and groups can purposefully mobilize to guide and alter experiences. In contrast to standard narratives, Reynolds and his collaborators reveal a mappable history of this idea in the folds and interstices of Western intellectual history as they show how the theories and methodologies of transversal poetics are themselves its byproducts.
Reviews
'This book is a treasure trove of sparkling new ideas, new connections and new directions. In short, it is the perfect example of its own topic, namely transversality. It has a singular and distinctive voice, yet that voice is collectively and collaboratively enunciated so the one is always the many. It is a stunning performance that ranges the length and breadth of modernity and postmodernity.' - Ian Buchanan, Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, UK, and Editor, Deleuze Studies
'Bryan Reynolds and company have done it again. Here they use phenomenology, hermeneutics, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and "schizoanalysis" to cross various subjectivities. They explore gene-like (or virus-like) memes, unintentional mimicry, the "Shakespearean G-spot," its antitheatrical critics, the "naming-function," performance anxiety, hypochondria, masochism, cartography, panopticism, historiography, feral children, playground reforms, cannibalism, terrorism, civility, human rights, and more - in this wild ride through diverse theoretical frontiers.' - Mark Pizzato, Professor of Theatre, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, USA
'Bryan Reynolds and his collaborators have produced an intriguing and insightful work on the problems of consciousness, desire, subjectivity, and cognition. Transversal Subjects is a major intervention in contemporary theory.' - Robert Markley, Professor of English, University of Illinois, USA
'This collaborative book is a unique attempt at a synthesis of poststructuralist theories (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari) with more traditional interpretations of subjectivity in phenomenology and reader-response theories. Based on a wide range of texts from Shakespeare and Montaigne to philosophical and architectural responses to 9/11, it convincingly argues for the importance and reconfiguration of subjectivity as an experiential process and reflexive power.' - Martin Procházka, Professor of English, American and Comparative Literature, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
'Transversal Subjects takes on Félix Guattari's claim that "among the fogs and miasmas which obscure out fin de millénaire, the question of subjectivity is now returning as a leitmotif" and pushes it deeply into our post 9/11 present. The book taps with equal sprezzatura into theoretical, historical and artistic reservoirs, its diverse voices and arguments held together by a deep commitment to the subjunctive as a means to 'move' subjects and send them off onto transversal trajectories. The intellectual energy and the adventurous spirit of Transversal Subjects takes your mind back to the pleasures and the excitement of the playground; the maybe most communal of heterotopias. If your body can follow, so much the better!' - Hanjo Berressem, Professor of American Studies, University of Cologne, Germany
'Like intricate fractals and other paradoxical or nonsensical worlds, the corpus of Bryan Reynolds evolves by expanding from within. In Transversal Subjects, the recursive, (re-)iterative itinerary of Reynolds' work spreads tentacles into new territories, demonstrating once again that Reynolds' collaborative means of production performatively enacts the singular conceptual (non-)logic of transversality. This is synthetic, transdiscplinary thought in its most supple form, providing a powerful tool for contemporary interventions, opening spaces for colleagues and students alike to step up, step into, and perform the next becoming. "WELCOME to the machine."' - Paul A. Harris, Loyola Marymount University, USA; Co-Editor, SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism
Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Subjective Affects: Surveying with Husserl, Shakespeare, and Derrida into the Twenty-First Century; B.Reynolds (with additional dialogue by B.Reynolds and G.Light)
The Masochistic Quest of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Deleuze and Guattari to Transversal Poetics with(out) Baudrillard;
A.Bryx and B.Reynolds
The Cartographic Impulse: Certeau's Transversality, Foucault's Panoptic Discourse, Cusa's Empiricism, and Google's New World; J.Fitzpatrick and B.Reynolds
Fugitive Rehearsals: The Ferality of Kaspar Hauser, Playground Performances, and the Transversality of Children;
B.Reynolds and D.Sherman
Civilizing Subjects, or Not: Montaigne's Guide to Modernity, Agamben's Exception, and Human Rights after Derrida; A.KLosowska and B.Reynolds
Afterword: Subjects Matter; G.Genosko
Glossary of Transversal Terms
Notes on Collaborators
Index
Authors
BRYAN REYNOLDS is Professor of Drama and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Irvine, USA. He is the author of Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (2006), Performing Transversally: Reimagining Shakespeare and the Critical Future (2003), Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (2002), co-editor of Rematerializing Shakespeare: Authority and Representation on the Early Modern English Stage (2005), and co-editor of Shakespeare Without Class: Misappropriations of Cultural Capital (2000). He is also an internationally produced playwright and a director of theatre.
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