The Centre for Comparative Literature presents
“Heterodox Monadologies: On the Aesthetic Intuition of the One-All”

a public lecture by
William Haver, Emeritus Professor
Comparative Literature, Binghamton University

author of The Body of This Death: Historicity and Sociality in the Time of AIDS; and Translator (with Introduction) of Nishida Kitarō, Ontology of Production: Three Essays

4-6pm Friday ,October 13, 2023
Old Vic, Room VC 215
91 Charles Street West University of Toronto

The climate crisis. What is needed is more than “adjustments” and something other than capitalism replaced by socialism or even communism. What is at stake is the entire range of assumptions according to which the logic of capitalism as well as many forms of socialism and communism make sense. We need not only new economies, but new aesthetics, and therefore new subjectivities. And this means rethinking the Multiple/One-All relation. Following upon readings of Stengers, Guattari, Deleuze, Whitehead, Souriau, and Nishida, heterodox monadologies are without gods, a first cause or a final telos—instead, it’s all on us. Us, situated in the Now and as the experience of sensuous (aesthetic) intuition that is the possibility and the limit of “subjects.” Us, the multiple, for which the object of such aesthetic intuition is the very continuity of being—the One-All.

This event is organized by Professor John Paul Ricco, faculty lead of the Theory Working Group, Centre for Comparative Literature. The Centre is the principal sponsor of this event. We also acknowledge generous support from the East Asian Studies Program