Into the Who of Things: Speculative Pragmatism and the Method of Dramatization

What is at stake in the method of dramatization? And how does it concern speculative pragmatism, a post-deleuzian philosophical approach that builds on the work of Alfred N. Whitehead and William James and encompasses the work of illustrious contemporary thinkers such as Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Anna Tsing and, last but not least, Bruno Latour? In trying to answer these questions, one is quickly confronted with another, simpler and essential question around which revolves Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s method of dramatization: the decisive importance of the question “Who?” in an attempt to elaborate on an image of thought that veers away from the clear and distinct realm of representation, inherited from Descartes and prevailing throughout modernity, hinting instead toward ontogenetic processes of individuation to be spotted within modernism. Articulating at the very intersection of the speculative and the pragmatic, the question “who?” becomes a key entry point into the speculative pragmatist notions of activity and intensity, and into Latour’s understanding of the inner narrativity of things in the age of the Anthropocene.

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