Marxism & Psychology Research Group (MPRG)

Novelty, Transformation and Change

Pli invites submissions for the next volume (21) on the topic of Novelty, Transformation and Change.

"Some values are eternally new, forever untimely, always contemporary with their creation, and these, even when they seem established, apparently assimilated by a society, in fact address themselves to other forces, soliciting from within that society anarchic forces of another nature." ~ Gilles Deleuze, 'On the Will to Power and the Eternal Return', in Desert Islands

"For a truth to affirm its newness, there must be a supplement. This supplement is committed to chance. It is unpredictable, incalculable. It is beyond what is. I call it an event." Alain Badiou, Philosophy and Truth, Infinite Thought

"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something – because it is always before one's eyes). The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. – And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful."

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

 Attempts to explain the genesis of novelty require and engender reappraisals of our metaphysical or ontological assumptions. The sense of novelty and the possibility of experiencing it are in turn open to debate. Further, the relation of novelty to the concepts of change or transformation stands in need of analysis. Thought which critically engages with the world engenders a pressing interest in how change or transformation can be brought about. We are then faced with the question of how we can move beyond our current existence and relation to the world from within these conditions. If we are interested in radically changing our own existence then how do we navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of losing the hope of real novelty and alienating the goal of change from human possibility? Can we convey the need for and goal of a transformation that would imply a break with our current terms of representation? Do accounts of the genesis of novelty offer the key to bring about deliberate change, or are they in tension with the concept of change? For the next edition of Pli we welcome papers that engage with or challenge these questions and the paradigms surrounding novelty, transformation and change.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

    * The event as the irruption of novelty in Badiou.
    * Difference and novelty.
    * Understanding novelty in terms of discovery or creation, and the relation between discovery and creation (epistemologically, phenomenologically, ontologically, ethically, or in terms of philosophical anthropology).
    * What role, if any, does the imagination play in the recognition or production of novelty?
    * Nietzsche's thought of the Übermensch.
    * Bergson's account of duration.
    * The incommensurability of the event: Deleuze's conception of the new.
    * The relation between a given metaphysics and ontology and the possibility of deliberate change. For instance, do ontologies of becoming allow for agency?
    * Discussions of the possibility, intelligibility and theoretical consequences associated with the notion of the 'cure' or other psychological alterations in psychoanalytic discourse as a form of radical change.

The deadline for submissions is 30th June 2009.

Submissions, no longer than 8,000 words should be sent by email to:  plijournal@googlemail.com. Alternatively submissions can be sent in the form of a single hard copy plus a copy on disk as a Word or RTF file. We only accept articles and will not review abstracts. Please refer to the "Notes for Contributors" on our website: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/philosophy/pli_journal/contributors.html.