Dividual Processes of Worlding from Philosophical, Sociological, and Aesthetic Perspectives

Abstract

This philosophical essay starts with an explanation of the concepts of “world” and “worldliness” in the philosophy of Heidegger in order to trace their transformation into processes of worlding in the philosophies of Deleuze & Guattari and Edouard Glissant. Their reinterpretations insist on the temporal, relational, and composite-cultural character of processes of worlding and on the necessity of the respective actors and agents becoming minor, other, multiple, and heterogeneous. Secondly, the essay traces the explanation of sociopolitical and digitalized processes in sociological and philosophical texts: the concept of “world society” as defined by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck, characterized as a positive form of transnational collaboration between different nongovernmental organizations. As in Deleuze’s negative assessment of digital control together with the constraint of personal flexibilization and dividuation in his final text (from the mid-1990s), the late Beck also provides rather negative descriptions of more recent processes of worlding. According to his analysis, these are provoked by global economic, technological, and political players and national interests exporting risks and catastrophes to neighboring countries, and subjecting certain people and populations to precarious dividual border existences. Finally, the text tries to uncover dividual processes as defined by Deleuze, including dividual processes in aesthetic articulations—in film, art, and exhibitions—due to their temporal, composite-cultural, and digital character and the inevitable mutual appropriations and resonances between these different aesthetic manifestations. Once again, using the concept of dividuation, this essay also diagnoses trends of aesthetic repetition and differentiation as well as of progressive homogenization due to international exchange and competition in the art sphere.