Paper short abstract:

In this paper I suggest that Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of problems and concepts in What is Philosophy? provides a useful framework for understanding what critics describe as the “new-age-y” turn in Stengers’ recent work on modern technoscience.

Paper long abstract:

It is well known that much of Isabelle Stengers' work on modern science and in more recent years, Alfred North Whitehead, is filtered through (and very often enhanced by) the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In this paper I suggest that Deleuze and Guattari's formulation of problems and concepts in What is Philosophy?—namely, "all concepts are connected to problems without which they would have no meaning" —provides a useful framework for understanding what critics describe as the "new-age-y" turn in Stengers' recent work. In particular, I contend that Stengers' use of sorcery, magic, animism, and the wisdom of Neopagan goddess, Starhawk, is a response to a problem posed in the context of modern technoscience. Drawing on Stengers' own cosmopolitical framework, I demonstrate that these long-discredited practices in the modern West answer Whitehead's call to develop "civilized modes of appreciation." Thus, pre-modern technai, such as magic and witchcraft, are meaningful in the context of a particular problem: How does one cultivate scientific civility in the 21st century?