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Title: Understanding and Resisting Contemporary National Aggression through the Philosophies of Deleuze and Harris
Abstract: We have reached a new level of science fiction dystopia becoming part of our historical timeline: humanity policed, enslaved, destroyed, and controlled by various types of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). J.B.S. Haldane and Bertrand Russell warned about projectile weaponry of their time, although Russell’s pessimism about scientific progress being good for all of humanity went further, suggesting it threatens “destruction of our civilization.” The problem is the existence of wars from national aggression and the connected issue of creating conditions for global subjugation through diminishing dignity of populations dispersed throughout various countries. We can find an attenuated optimism in Leonard Harris’s and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophies. We philosophize resistance to attacks from autonomous weapon systems (AWS) with artificial intelligence integration through struggle philosophy and illuminate the problematic through assessments in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze helps us understand the ontology of national aggression through his categorization of social formations as well as other concepts in 1227: Treatise on Nomadology—The War Machine. Harris’s insurrectionist ethics, a moral-orientation toward concern for those experiencing necro-being (living as a kind of death) and preventing necro-tragedy helps us resist national aggression. Harris’s insurrectionist ethics opposes the psychological dispositions of domination and authoritarianism and is a type of humanism. Insurrectionist ethics bolsters the argument that military aggression is to be prohibited when diplomacy, self-restraint and collaboration are available options.
As usual, we'll meet in the Maloney Seminar Room, Social Science Building 224, 3-5p. Those unable to attend in person can spectate virtually via this Zoom link.