Deleuze and the Humanities

The volume is inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project, which builds on the critique of European Humanism and opens up inspiring new perspectives for the renewal of the field. The book gathers leading scholars in the field of Deleuze, while also bringing together scholars from Europe and North America (the West), as well from Asia (the East), in order to create a lively academic debate, and contribute to the growth and expansion of the field. it provides both critical and creative insights into some key issues in contemporary social and political thought. More specifically, the volume hopes to start a critical evaluation of the reception and creative adaptation of Deleuze and of other Continental philosophers in the Austral-Asian region, with special focus on China.

A zigzagging journey across unique singularities of words, flesh, art and organisms inflected within each other entirely newly unravelled through Asian cartographies of sense and affect. This volume creates flowering dynamic dialogues that elucidate the rhizomatic reaches of Deleuze and the gift his philosophy brings to both understanding and creating new heterogeneous global connections., It is an intellectual adventure of the first order to join these zig-zagging East-West journeys, as new encounters that split open the assumed world come to seem possible, and affective voyages remake the gestures composing territories. A fresh and eye-opening take on the meaning of the Asian century, re-imagined as also a Deleuzian century., A sharp and timely collection; and one like no other. Each chapter sets up a fascinating interaction between the trio of: Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian theory; inventive approaches to aesthetics, politics, ethics, culture and knowledge; and East Asian contexts of thought and practice., The well known theorist of the Posthuman and the Nomadic Subject, Rosi Braidotti, with Amy Chan and Kin Yuen Wong of the University of Hong Kong, has staged this first remarkable encounter between Eastern and Western readers of Deleuze, by putting together a brilliant collection of essays distinguished by the judicious choice of its subjects, the calibre of its contributors, the lucidity of their presentation, and the strength of their argumentation. The volume will be an indispensable reading for all those interested in the transversal relationship between Deleuze's philosophy of Life and Difference and the Asian naturalistic and holistic tradition; in a joint East/West effort to displace anthropocentrism in favour of a sustainable, nomadic subjectivity; and in a transcultural attempt to revitalize the traditional Humanities, inside the new alliance between philosophy, science and the arts, capable of regaining the trace of the Deleuzo-Guattarian itinerary.

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished University Professor and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University.Her most recent books are : Posthuman Knowledge (Polity, 2019), The Posthuman Glossary (coedited with M Hlavajova, Bloomsbury 2018), Posthuman Ecologies (coedited with S. Bignall, Rowman &Littlefield 2019) and Conflicting Humanities (coedited with P Gilroy, Bloomsbury 2016). Amy K.S. Chan is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.Kin Yuen Wong is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Shue Yan University.