“Immanent naturalism” is political theorist William E. Connolly’s term for a tradition of thought that doesn’t seek ultimate explanations, ahistorical forces, or transcendental frameworks to give meaning to the world; rather, it finds meaning enough in the world as it is experienced by mortals like us.
The general idea is that the world itself is richer, more mysterious, and more radically open — to change, emergent complexity, and innovation — than we tend to think, and that by opening ourselves to that richness and mystery, we extend our capacities for deepening the experience of life for ourselves and those we interact with. In a sense, immanent naturalism is another term for an earth- and life-embracing ethic that conceives of the universe as fundamentally open and pluralistic, and that refrains from any form of closure including the closure that thinks it’s figured it all out.
Connolly’s writings on immanent naturalism include sections of Neuropolitics and Capitalism and Christianity, American Style; follow the highlights in the linked book excerpts. See also his reply to Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age at the Immanent Frame blog.
“Immanent naturalists,” Connolly writes, “such as, variously, Epicurus, Lucretius, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Deleuze ground ethics in the first instance in an attachment to the world or a gratitude for being that includes and exceeds the identities infused into them. We do not ask, in the first instance, why we should be moral. We ask, in the first instance, how to enliven and cultivate care for an abundance of life over identity that already infuses us to some degree.” Connolly writes of being guided by a “visceral gratitude” and “care for a protean diversity of being,” and his various writings work out the implications of what that might mean for politics and culture, and by what methods and techniques we might be able to get better at it.
On this blog, I use the term “immanent naturalism” a little hesitantly and experimentally, thinking it through as I speak/write, to see if it makes sense and if it might catch on (with me, with others) or not. Part of my hesitation comes from the dualistic implications of naturalism (natural versus supernatural or unnatural, naturalist versus idealist). Connolly’s point, like the Spinozist and Deleuzian traditions he draws from, is that nature includes everything that is. For Deleuze, it’s not just everything that is, but everything that has the potential to be, that is virtually there in the structure of the universe, i.e., the structure of becoming (whether it ends up becoming actual or not). Naturalism, therefore, doesn’t have to only deal with empirically knowable existing things; it can be a matter of recognizing that the world is process, and that the invisible and unknowable, for partial and situated observer-participants like ourselves, is also part of that world.
Conceivably, this “immanent naturalist” rubric might fade into others over time here – which makes sense, because I intend it to cover such a broad range of thinking (process philosophy, “social nature,” actor-network theory, autopoietic systems theory, ecosemiotics, embodied cognition, etc.).
See also On immanence.
Thank you for sharing. Nice blog, very helpful.
Adrian, I am ecstatic about your blog! It has provoked much thought in a variety of areas that hold my interest. I’m glad your hesitancy didn’t prevent you from offering this post on on “Immanent Naturalism.” It seems to me we need to put as many of these generous (and generative) ideas into discursive circulation as possible. I have a question and then I’ll put into the mix a bit about some of what I’m up to, with hopes it will add to the Deleuzian line of flight that your blog seems to engender. On your “On Immanence” (where the comment box is turned off), I was very intrigued by your use of the phrase ‘apocalyptic narratives’. I have a sense I know what you mean by these and their potential dangers and closure seeking tendencies, but could you say a bit more?
My work currently puts poststructuralist and material feminist ideas to work on enduring issues in education (as well as the social science that invests it). Concerns for the planet and its species (human and non-human) fuel me. I have always engaged visual art as an avenue for making more explicit the physicality of my and others theorizing–though I couldn’t think or certainly talk about it as such until ingesting a Deleuze-O-Guattarian philosophy of the arts (with loads of help from Ron Bogue’s, Elizabeth Grosz’s and Simon O’Sullivan’s writings). Currently, I am turning to ethnographic data I have collected over almost a year in a studio art classroom at a university to help me and hopefully others think differently about the possibilities that an Immanence Pedagogy might offer (your cogent work is enormously helpful here). Some in the Complexity field (those who are influenced mainly by posty, Continentalist philosophies) are talking about the concept of ‘strong emergence’ in relation to pedagogy and I hope to enlarge those ideas with a dialogue about the synesthetic, non-closure seeking, and nomadic nature that Immanence positionings by teachers and learners can open up. I increasingly see the productive role that art can play in this and other globally critical endeavors. With much more on my mindbody, I’ll close–and do so with deep admiration and gratitude for all that this blog’s conversation invokes!
Hi Kelly – Thanks for sharing your thoughts and enthusiasm; glad you found the blog provocative and productive to think with.
In response to your question about apocalyptic narratives, it’s exactly those closure seeking tendencies that I’m wary of. Apocalypse offers a powerful set of figures for thinking the state of the world, and I’ve found them attractive at times myself, since they seem to promise both a radical transformation (/cleansing/purification) and a clarity of meaning that is otherwise elusive in our world. What I refuse in them is not so much their selectivity in interpreting events (selectivity can be a useful strategy) as it is the paranoiac-like intensity with which that selectivity is pursued and alternatives are rejected. The world is much more open than that, I think. The apocalyptic urge seems related to a kind of heavily armored character structure. As I recall, feminist theorists Lee Quinby (in a couple of books on the topic) and Catherine Keller both do a good job analyzing this sort of apocalypticism, which has receded somewhat since the millennium, but can still be found in movements circulating around the idea of the Mayan calendrical “2012” etc.
At the same time, artists like William Blake have always made very interesting use of apocalyptic figures…
I note from your web site that you were at UVM, probably before I got here (which was in 2003)…? I’m very intrigued by your use of art. And of course the theorists you mention (Grosz, O’Sullivan, Bogue) are among the best to take D&G’s ideas into understanding and working with the arts. I’ve got Grosz’s latest book on my desk and am hoping to read it soon… Please keep visiting, and let me know if you’d like to do a guest post or would like a link to your own work at some point.
I feel as though I am in one of those invigorating Deleuze and Guattari “and… and… and” moments, with lots I want to ask, offer and so on. Thanks so much for your reply, Adrian, in general and specifically regarding apocalyptic narratives. And, of course, with your explanation as useful bridge, I see and sense the more sinister (or at least suspect) form of these narratives in my field of education all the time. With the competing aims of schooling (i.e., are we to educate for democratic citizenship, global competition, or individual social mobility?) and the high political and ideological stakes surrounding these aims, there’s no shortage of, in your words, ‘selectivity in interpreting events’. Circling around these ideas, I’ve recently completed a mixed-media image to accompany a chapter (due out sometime soon-will be in a book edited by two UVM faculty!). The image is titled Leadership Zombidom–though I hasten to note here (and in the chapter), that the zombie figuration and my use of it in teaching educational leadership is framed by the traditional Haitian conceptualization of ‘zombi’, which was not apocalyptic , but rather a highly productive, boundary blurring figure that roams as a rupture to unexamined (and often destructive) binaries. So my art knows few boundaries–Which, as I think about it, may make me a bit apocalyptic to some in my field… I have recently published a book titled Invoking Mnemosyne: Art, Memory and the Uncertain Emergence of a Feminist Embodied Methodology. I really want to think about that work in relation to many of the ideas offered here in the blog and readings you suggest. So more on that as I digest more process-relational and immanence readings.
If the Grosz book you’ve on your desk is Chaos, Territory, Art, it’s fantastic! I’d be most interested in hearing your thoughts when you’ve the time.
And, it seems you and I just missed each other at UVM. I left in 2003 after completing my doctorate there, with my then 11 month old son in arms. I think I read somewhere here, you’ve a new bundle of becomings. Congrats!
Kelly – Apologies for the delay; the end of the semester (among other things) had clobbered me…
As it happens, right after I wrote those words to you about apocalyptic narratives, I went to see a very good version (in my opinion) of an apocalyptic narrative: Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia. It’s far better, I think, than his last one, Antichrist. I’ll be writing about it here soon… But I like it, in part, despite its apocalypticism: it presages a kind of doom that throws life into perspective and encourages reflection, not the kind that urges us onward toward apocalypse or toward frenzied avoidance or desperate action in defiance of apocalypse (though those are, arguably, the responses given by the characters in the film). I love the film for the depth of its images and how they can haunt us, in a good way, if we let them.
The Grosz book is actually her recent one on Darwinism, Becoming Undone. I’d seen her give a talk from it and liked it very much. I still haven’t really cracked the cover of the actual book yet. But I also liked Chaos, Territory, Art a lot – I found it very productive to think with as I read it (a couple of years ago).
Please post more about your art and/or your writing, which both sound very intriguing. Zombis as boundary blurring figures… make perfect sense to me.
My bundle is reaching 11 months next week. Cheers, Adrian
Re. your para 2: The general idea is that the world itself is richer, more mysterious, and more radically open …
See http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/01/ode-to-a-flower-richard-feynman/
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