Weaponized Joy

I've been tinkering at the edges of this 'introduction to Deleuze on becoming' for a while, and I finally found some free time to whack it all together, so - here is a thing I wrote on Deleuze and becoming. As with all of my posts of Deleuzeian vocabulary, I largely wrote this for myself, as 'becoming' was and is one of those topics that I was struggling to 'put together', and this is one of my attempts to do that for me. Hopefully though, others might find it interesting or useful! This is not comprehensive - I don't really talk about the specific becomings that D&G do, like becoming-animal, becoming-imperceptible on so on, but this is already very long! Any suggestions, critiques, corrections, or questions are welcome.                                                 A more accurate, contemporary depiction of the 'tree of life'...

I like to write small reviews - recapitulations, really - of some of the books I’ve read. Here’s one for Grégorie Chamayou’s Manhunts: A Philosophical History : This is my favourite kind of book - enormous in scope, modest in page-count, dripping in historical anecdote, although all approached through a very specific lens: the manhunt. The first thing to be established is just how relevant the manhunt is in our own time. Far from a vestige of a primitive past now left behind, the manhunt today takes its form in the sweep for illegal immigrants, the 'bounties' on abortion and gender care seekers, the murderous buzz of Predator drones, or else the algorithmic hunt for both cybercriminals and whistleblowers. In fact, once acquainted with the workings of the manhunt, its presence becomes impossible to 'unsee’, a form of power - 'cynegetic power' - at work not only in the hunting of the Helots by ancient Spartans, but equally in every other police procedural now beamed i...