<<TRANSMATHOME

SUMMARY

At a critical level, this thesis argues that the domain of thought cannot be limited to a field determined by the ideas of language, concepts and reason. What is shown, to substantiate this claim, is that there are many modes of engagement in effect in the sphere of human connections with the world, and that an aspect or attribute of the world is in each case the substantial correlate or ‘other side’ of the mode of engagement. Four of these modes of engagement are delineated in depth: engagement with transmutative or intensive connections; engagement with fields of motions (fields consisting of relations of speed and slowness, and of movement and rest); engagement with expressive/transmissional modulations of fields (language); and engagement with segmented, and dominatory spaces (reason).

The account of these four modes of engagement, consisting both of attributes and of ‘faculties’, is the central concern of the thesis.  The delineation of the different modes of thought necessarily demonstrates that the domains  of language, concepts and reason make up only one set of zones within the sphere of thought. Concepts in the sense in question are semantic in nature, and therefore pertain to language.

At the level of explication, the thesis gives an account of a philosophical strategy proposed in A Thousand Plateaus, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and variously described by them as ‘pragmatics’, ‘schizoanalysis’ and ‘micropolitics’. This strategy is shown to be a method that can also accurately described as ‘intensive cartography’ – a cartography that includes the domain of extension as only one aspect, and which is to be used as a means to intensify engagements with the world. In delineating attributes and corresponding human faculties the thesis is an exemplification of  intensive cartography, at the same time as it is a critique in relation to language and reason.

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