Continuity and Event in Leibniz and Deleuze
Poetics of the Fold
A multi-layered analysis of continuity, fold, and event and their heteropoietic character in Deleuze’s metaphysics of genesis
- Conceptualises a Deleuzian-Leibnizian notion of continuity in relation to event and reconstructs Deleuze’s metaphysics of genesis
- Provides a comparative interpretation of The Fold, Difference and Repetition, and Logic of Sense in terms of continuity
- Traces an aesthetic dimension in Deleuze’s metaphysics by drawing on his notion of dramatization and proposing the parallel concept of poeticization
Hamed Movahedi reconstructs a Deleuzian concept of continuity and event through comparative readings of The Fold, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense. His analysis of The Fold in dialogue with Leibniz opens a new conceptual space for continuity, one that entails both irreducible heterogeneity and ontological inseparability. This concept, which challenges conventional notions of continuity and discontinuity, discloses its implicit yet decisive presence in Deleuze’s philosophy of genesis in Difference and Repetition and the genesis of language in Logic of Sense. Deleuze’s story of genesis, preoccupied with the conditions of formation across various fields, is recounted in terms of continuity, which turns out to be a poetics, a prelude to art and politics.
Acknowledgment
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Problem of Continuity
Continuity of Nature, Nature of Continuity
Part I: Continuity qua Fold: The Fold
CHAPTER 1: Proliferation of Folds: A Baroque Image
1.1 The New: Impossibility of the Repetition of Past
The Repetition of an Impossible Past
1.2 The Fold, And, A Baroque Leibniz
1.3 The Baroque Proliferation of Folds
1.3.1 The Folds of Inorganic Matter
1.3.2 The Organic Folds of Matter
1.3.3 Birth, And, Death
1.3.4 Leibniz’s Law of Continuity
1.4 Second Floor of the Baroque House
CHAPTER 2: A Metaphysical Ten(or)sion: From Inflection to Inclusion
2.1 Leibniz’s Universe: An Infinite Interlaced Fabric
2.2 The Folds in the Soul: From Inflection to Inclusion
2.3 The Metaphysical Tension
CHAPTER 3: Proliferation of Events: Affirmation of Bifurcation And Divergent Continuity
3.1 Towards a Logic of Events
3.2 Substance and Unity in a World-Event
3.3 Genesis of Worlds: Compossibility and Incompossibility
3.4 Affirmation of Bifurcation and Divergence
3.5 Complication of Divergent Series: The Chaosmos
CHAPTER 4: Constellation of Continuity as Logic: Leibniz, Peirce, Blanchot
4.1 Reconcilability of Principles: The Identity of Indiscernibles and Continuity
4.2 Incarnation in a Body
4.3 Actualization and Realization
4.4 Event: A Deleuzian Dialogue with Blanchot and Peirce
Part II: Genesis and Continuity: Difference and Repetition
CHAPTER 5: Ideas and Divergent Continuity
5.1 Transcendental Field
5.2 Problematization of Ontology
5.3 Ideality of the Virtual
5.4 Biological Idea
5.5 Proliferation of Continuity: Anger Face and Love Face of Ideas
CHAPTER 6: Torsional Continuity: Dramatization and Poeticization of Ideas
6.1 Ideas of Society
6.2 Ideas of Art
6.2.1 Erewhon: The Non-Localizable Locus of the Artist
6.3 Dramatizing the Obscure Ideas
6.4 Poeticization: The Poeticity of Ideas
CHAPTER 7: Intensive Continuity
7.1 The Critical and Creative Faces of Ideas: Art and the Political
7.2 Intensity qua “Who” of Expression
7.3 Intensive Continuity: A Leibnizian Image, Intensities Enveloping and Enveloped
7.4 Torsional Continuity: Intensities and Ideas
7.5 An Embryonic Heteroverse
Part III: Genesis of Language and Continuity: Logic of Sense
CHAPTER 8: Logic of Sense and Continuity
8.1 Philosophizing at the Surface: The Stoic Incorporeals
8.2 Sense: The Fourth Dimension and the Possibility of Language
8.3 Inherent Dualities and Paradoxes of the Structure
8.4 The Mobile Decentered Paradoxical Element
Chapter 9: Nonsense, Event, Continuity
9.1 Problematization of Series
9.2 Nonsense and Static Genesis
9.3 Continuity, Aion, Chronos
9.4 Dedekind Cut, Point-Fold, False-Divergent Continuity
9.5 Ethics of the Event, Counter-Actualization of the Actor-Dancer
9.6 Univocity, Poeticity, Continuity
Conclusion: Heteropoietic Continuity
Continuity and Genesis: Four Continuities
Continuity, Ethics, Dramas, and Poeticity
Continuity, Event, Linguistic Actualization
Appendix: Continuity and the History of Calculus: Leibniz’s Predecessors
Aristotle’s Conception of Continuity
Calculus and its Historical Development
Baroque Curves: Archimedes
Baroque Motions: Galileo and Kepler
Calculus and Algebra
Leibniz and the Development of Calculus
References
Mohavedi’s book is not only a groundbreaking analysis of Deleuze’s reading of Leibniz but is an original work of philosophy in its own right, proposing a novel concept of “divergent continuity” that opens up new directions for the philosophy of the future. A masterful tour de force.
This engaging and elegant book constitutes a major advance on some of the most important and difficult concepts of Deleuze's philosophy: event and continuity. It is therefore indispensable for cutting edge research in contemporary metaphysics. Its argument contributes in important ways to research on Deleuze and the history of philosophy, most notably on Leibniz, and on Deleuze and art, with an original and exciting thesis.
Event and Continuity in Leibniz and Deleuze: Poetics of the Fold is a tour de force that ranges through philosophy, mathematics, art, and politics. Movahedi compellingly shows how the unthematized concept of continuity is the key that unlocks not only Deleuze’s reading of Leibniz but also Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense.
In this ambitious book, Hamed Movahedi sets himself the difficult task of reinitializing one of the oldest questions in philosophy, and among its most thorny: the nature of continuity. He levers a space for this rethinking by displacing the brunt of the question from the opposition between the continuous and the discrete onto the productive nexus of continuity and event. A cascade of perennial philosophical issues – the one and the multiple, quality and quantity, extensive and intensive, the sensible and the intelligible, the virtual and the actual, the subjective and the objective, the material and the ideal, difference and repetition, the infinitesimal and the infinite – are attracted to the site of the rethinking. Working between Leibniz and Deleuze, always attentive to these surrounding issues, Movahedi nuances the concept of the continuous with distinctions between species. This includes one of his own confection, the intriguing notion of "tortional continuity," which becomes the key to his account. Continuity and Event is an original work of philosophy that impressively succeeds in its aim. It will be of special interest to readers of continental philosophy and process philosophy – and to anyone who has wondered with Zeno how the arrow arrives at its target.
Hamed Movahedi’s book offers a profound renewal of our understanding of continuity. Although Deleuze is widely recognized as a thinker of difference, multiplicity, and virtuality, his metaphysics is deeply influenced by Leibniz, particularly in relation to the notions of continuous series and the event across multiple levels. Without a doubt, this study transforms the broader approach to Deleuze’s philosophy.
