Publications

(1) “The Ordinary Contested: Laruelle contra Deleuze” in Paragraph (July 2021): https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/para.2021.0367

Abstract:

This article addresses the question of the relationship between corporeality and the ordinary in the works of François Laruelle. This is done through the formulation of the ‘ordinary body’ that draws from across Laruelle's work on the ordinary, corporeality and photography in order to outline Laruelle's radically immanent account of embodiment. The critical outline of Laruellean corporeality and the ordinary body is drawn out via a critical posing of Laruelle in contrast to Deleuze and Guattari. In doing so, the article indicates the singular difference between Laruelle, on one side, and Deleuze and Guattari, on the other, with respect to corporeal immanence and the usage of the everyday and ordinary. The article concludes with an argument that the relationship between the body and the ordinary in Laruelle's thought implies a novel non-philosophical or non-standard ‘poetics’ and usage of the ordinary.

(2) “On the ‘Absolute Relation’ of the Spread Body (Falque) and the Flesh (Henry)” in Crossing: The INPR Journal(November 2020): https://inprjournal.pubpub.org/pub/crossing1-disputatio-sackin-poll/release/2

Description:

This is a response to Prof Karl Hefty’s critical engagement with Prof Emmanuel Falque’s reading of Michel Henry’s phenomenology of the flesh.

(3) “Michel Henry and the Resistance of the Flesh” in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia (July 2020): https://www.jstor.org/stable/26922254

Abstract:

The article addresses criticisms of Michel Henry’s formulation of auto-affection that claim it is ‘disembodied’ and ‘idealist’ by revisiting the French Spiritualist legacy, especially Maine de Biran, that informs his early work. By examining the way Henry interprets and reformulates the spiritualist sense of habit in his early works, the article traces connections between his early description of embodied experience and interpretations of Maine de Biran’s account of the ‘simple presence’ of the body, that is, given without donation, including works by Aimé Forest, Henri Gouhier, and Gabriel Mardinier. In doing so, the article puts forward a redefinition of Henry’s embodied life, no longer in terms of auto-affection, but in terms of resistance, that is, a prior given without the self-donation of the flesh. This draws Henry’s early work into dialogue with contemporary iterations of the theological turn, especially Emmanuel Falque. The essay closes with a speculative sketch of the way this reformulates the contemporary grammar of phenomenological experience.

(4) “Michel Henry and Metaphysics: An Expressive Ontology” in Open Theology (October, 2019): https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/opth-2019-0032/html

Abstract:
There is an ambivalence and indecision at the heart of Michel Henry’s phenomenological ontology of  life  that  this  article  seeks  to  resolve. Either “Being  is  a  phenomenon  only  when  it  is  at  a  distance  from  itself ” or “the immediate is Being itself as originally given to itself in immanence.”1 The decision is, simply put,  between  distance  or  immediacy.  In  order  to  address  this  indecision,  I  put  forward  an  hypothetical  expressive interpretation of Henry’s phenomenology of life, drawing upon Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation of post-Cartesian metaphysics. The metaphysical language of expression is used (a) to make clear the internal structure  of  ‘auto-affection’  —  a  key  concept  for  Henry’s  phenomenology  of  life  —  as  well  as  (b)  to  correct  essentialist readings of this put forward by Dominique Janicaud and (c) broadly Hegelian interpretations put forward by François-David Sebbah. This expressive reading clarifies the ontological significance of life and auto-affection, showing more clearly the way the living self relates to Life or God as a dynamic movement and flux, without distance, gap, or transcendence. Through the clarification of Henry’s ontology of life in terms of expression a further ambiguity with regard to the theological significance and status of Life is revealed. The identification of an immanent and auto-affective Life with God in the early works appears closer to a Spinozist God than the later, Christian writings otherwise suggest. It is possible for the immediate, inner experience of auto-affective life to be as much secular as religious. I discuss this in the final part of this article.