Didier Debaise (Free University of Brussels) will be giving a seminar and host a workshop at Dundee, hosted by the Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy and supported by the Royal Institute for Philosophy and the AHRC-funded project Energy: A Philosophy of Practice. All welcome; registration not required.
Seminar: Thinking the Earth: Geophilosophy from Deleuze and Guattari to Latour
Wednesday 22nd of January Dalhousie 2F15 – 16.00-17.30
Sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy
In their latest work, Deleuze and Guattari invent “geophilosophy”. With this expression, they intend to give philosophy a new orientation by inscribing it in its terrestrial and territorial dimensions. The first sentences with which they introduce it are eloquent: ‘Subject and object give a poor approximation of thought. Thinking is neither a line drawn between subject and object nor a revolving of one around the other. Rather, thinking takes place in the relationship of territory and the earth’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1991: 85). In this lecture, I’d like to follow the genesis of this geophilosophy, show its main features and trace the way in which it finds a new relevance in what B. Latour has called “The new climate regime”.
Workshop: Thinking Interdependent Networks of Becoming
Thursday 23rd of January Carnelley Small LT – 11.00-13.00
In collaboration with ENERGY
How can philosophy contribute to understanding the complex web of interdependencies that characterize our world? Didier Debaise, a leading voice in speculative philosophy and environmental thought, invites participants to reimagine the concept of interdependency in a workshop that draws on his work with Isabelle Stengers. This event explores how contemporary philosophical tools, particularly those inspired by process philosophy and relational ontologies, can illuminate the dynamics of energy, matter, and life.
Aligned with the ENERGY project’s commitment to interdisciplinary approaches, the workshop seeks to challenge anthropocentric paradigms by examining energy as a connective force that transcends human and non-human divides. Debaise will lead discussions on how energy flows are not merely resources to be exploited but integral to a mesh of relations that sustain life, communities, and ecosystems.
Participants will engage with philosophical frameworks that rethink causality, agency, and temporality to address urgent environmental and ethical challenges. Drawing connections between philosophy, ecology, and energy studies, the workshop aims to foster a collaborative space where new ideas about coexistence and mutual dependency can emerge.
Suggested reading for this workshop: Didier and Stengers, Ecology of trust. Didier and Stengers, The Insistence of Possibles: Towards a Speculative Pragmatism. Email Tina for copies of the texts.
Didier Debase is a permanent researcher at the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), director of the Research Center in Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is the co-founder, with Isabelle Stengers, of the Groupe d’Études Constructivistes (GECO). His main areas of research are contemporary forms of speculative philosophy, theories of events, and links between American pragmatism and French contemporary philosophy. He is director of a collection at Les presses du réel, member of the editorial board of the journals Multitudes and Inflexions. He wrote two books on Whitehead’s philosophy (Un empirisme spéculatif and Le vocabulaire de Whitehead), edited volumes on pragmatism (Vie et experimentation), on the history of contemporary metaphysics (Philosophie des possessions), and he wrote numerous papers on Bergson, Tarde, Souriau, Simondon, and Deleuze. He has just published a new book entitled L’appât des possibles which will shortly appear in English (Nature as event, Duke University Press, 2017).
