The Arachnean and Other Texts by Fernand Deligny is a collection of writings from the second half of the 1970s. Long before the digital age of social networks, meshworks, and digital webs, Fernand Deligny speaks to us in his own autobiographical and aphoristic manner, always experiencing life in the form of “the network as a mode of being.”.

Em Empirismo e subjetividade (1953) Gilles Deleuze irá afirmar que o principal problema do pensamento de Hume é determinar de que modo o espírito devém sujeito. Tomamos essa distinção geral no pensamento humeano para, a partir daí, efetuarmos distinções específicas que colocam em lados distintos animais humanos em sua vida na linguagem e na cultura e certos animais humanos cujos modos de vidas não se conformam aos gabaritos de um padrão majoritário e hegemônico que se tornou, por norma, o traço (...) distintivo do homem-que-nós-somos. Essa questão se alimentará em seus desdobramentos da crítica à linguagem efetuada por Fernand Deligny, em especial a partir de suas experiências com as crianças autistas não verbais com as quais conviveu nas montanhas de Cévennes, que trará uma nova ideia sobre o que é o humano para além de qualquer forma simbólica ou subjetiva. (shrink)

This article takes as its point of departure unexpected similarities in the ways that the experimental educator, writer and filmmaker Fernand Deligny and Jean-Luc Nancy conceptualize community. Deligny is remembered for his alternative community for non-speaking children with autism, established in the Cévennes in 1967 and founded on the absence of language and relationality as it is commonly understood. This article probes the paradox that in this community we find a rapprochement with Nancy's relational ontology. Drawing on (...) Deligny's theoretical responses to the dynamics he witnessed and the cartographical methods employed to trasce the movements of the children as they roamed, and placing these in dialogue with Nancy's texts on community through the decades, I suggest a kinship between the two thinkers which opens onto broader questions about the relationship between theories and practices of community. (shrink)

Resumo: O ensaio parte da consideração de que a obra de Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) é uma intersecção entre diversas áreas do saber, como a filosofia, a educação, a psicologia, a antropologia e a etologia. Assim, busca formular um Deligny Contemporâneo, uma figura que se constitui a partir do debate público estabelecido em torno das pessoas diagnosticadas com o autismo na contemporaneidade. A partir de uma revisão bibliográfica narrativa, o texto propõe dois caminhos gerais de compreensão sobre a (...) obra do autor, que ainda é bastante desconhecida em território brasileiro: (1) o problema do poder pedagógico-psiquiátrico e de seu efeito sobre a maneira como o autismo passa a ser compreendido; e (2) o problema do topos, das formas de convívio possíveis entre modos de ser verbais e não verbais, que se desdobram em uma discussão sobre o lugar social do autismo. Palavras-chave: Autismo; Neurodiversidade; Educação; Poder Psiquiátrico; Fernand Deligny Contemporary Fernand Deligny: cartographing between education and psychiatric power Abstract: The essay starts from the consideration that the work of Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) is an intersection between different areas of knowledge, such as philosophy, education, psychology, anthropology, and ethology. Thus, it seeks to formulate a Contemporary Deligny, a figure that is constituted from the public debate established around people diagnosed with Autism in contemporary times. Based on a narrative bibliographic review, the text proposes two general ways of understanding the author's work, which is still largely unknown in Brazilian territory: (1) the problem of pedagogical-psychiatric power and its effect on the way in which autism becomes understood; and (2) the problem of topos, of the forms of possible coexistence between verbal and non-verbal ways of being, which unfold in a discussion about the social place of autism. Keywords: Autism; Neurodiversity; Education; Psychiatric Power; Fernand Deligny Contemporâneo Fernand Deligny: cartografía entre educación y poder psiquiátrico Resumen: El ensayo parte de la consideración de que la obra de Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) es una intersección entre diferentes áreas del conocimiento, como la filosofía, la educación, la psicología, la antropología y la etología. Se busca así formular un Deligny Contemporáneo, un personaje que se constituye a partir del debate público establecido en torno a las personas diagnosticadas con Autismo en la época contemporánea. A partir de una revisión bibliográfica narrativa, el texto propone dos caminos generales para comprender la obra del autor, aún en gran medida desconocida en el territorio brasileño: (1) el problema del poder pedagógico-psiquiátrico y su efecto en la forma en que se llega a entender el autismo; y (2) el problema del topos, de las formas de coexistencia posible entre modos de ser verbales y no verbales, que se despliegan en una discusión sobre el lugar social del autismo. Palabras-clave: Autismo; Neurodiversidad; Educación; Poder Psiquiátrico; Fernand Deligny Data de registro: 04/02/2024 Data de aceite: 25/09/2024. (shrink)

Les écrits de Fernand Deligny ont circulé entre plusieurs mains bien avant d’être publiés. Félix Guattari et Jean Oury l’ont accueilli à la clinique de La Borde de 1965 à 1967. En juillet 1967, Deligny quitte la clinique de La Borde pour s’installer dans la propriété de famille des Guattari à Gourdas dans les Cévennes. C’est ainsi que la tentative et non l’institution des Cévennes dirigée par Deligny commence. Il s’agit d’une tentative parce que Deligny (...) refuse toute forme d’institutionnalisation. Plus tard, Mannoni, Dolto et d’autres lui confieront des enfants. Il est indéniable que la conception de la cartographie delignienne a profondément marqué et influencé celle de Guattari et par voie de conséquence la lecture deleuzienne et guattarienne de la carte comme dispositif territorial. Nous sommes effectivement dans des agencements collectifs d’énonciation et peu importe le nom d’auteur. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the cartographical method as a political option able to destroy the linguistic and semiotic empire of sense. Starting from the difference between map and tracing, Deleuze and Guattari understood the power of a rhizomatic expression, commonly represented by the obsessive and compulsive gesture of autistics, or their impossibility of speaking correctly. This phenomenon has been deeply analysed by Fernand Deligny through his experience in the Cévennes, where he inaugurated his personal anti-psychoanalytic and anti-linguistic (...) method. During this collective living, the wanderings of the autistic children, called Lignes d’erre, were traced and gathered in a cartography in which action overtakes word and speech, and human gestures are reterritorialized. Characterized by movement without finality, life in Cévennes becomes a “life raft”, where the raft is no more the shipwreck of humanity, but the shelter for no- speakers. Therefore, a new spatial configuration is given, where the bonds between people and with objects exist exactly as the pieces of wood in the raft: namely slacken, rhizomatic. (shrink)

The period March 2020–March 2021 marks the time reference for this theoretical study as it denotes the initial surge of the Pandemic, where whole societies were destabilized by the ferocity of Covid-19. Within this context, I posit COVID-19 as a transforming event: one that exhausts worlds. Drawing from Jan Masschelein’s works on Arendt and the architecture of public education, the question at hand is how does Covid-19, as a transforming event, affect and change the very essence of education? I begin (...) by comparing two definitions of crisis, Arendt’s notion of krisis, with philosopher Peter Pal Pelbart’s thinking around crisis, illness, and ‘exhaustion.’ I conclude by identifying an ‘inconsequential’ architectural space, a ‘spandrel.’ This spatial by-product, revealed during the Pandemic, is located within the very design of the ‘perfect’ public school, schole: the Arendtian ‘table.’ This spandrel aligns with Fernand Deligny’s ‘primordial communism.’. (shrink)

This paper argues that in daycare centres in France, where children are cared for from four months to age three, the competence of female staff members is usually denied and unvalued vis à vis the expert opinions. The paper highlights empirical research on early childhood and gender, providing pragmatic access to children's languages of desire, a language mostly ignored. Incorporating the ideas of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, the paper draws upon the conceptualization of Fernand Deligny who took care (...) of autistic children in mapping what he called ‘lines of wandering’, an idea that shows how desire can become accessible. In the present ‘society of control’ which Deleuze analyses and which coexists with Foucault's discipline and biopower, such lines of flight enable the emergence of a new narrative for young children's desire, and for the competence of the female staff members in their departure from the highway of normalization. (shrink)

Como nos autistas com quem trabalhou por muitos anos, para Fernand Deligny a imagem se contrapõe à linguagem pois recusa aquilo que esta carrega: sentido, mensagem, finalidade, palavras de ordem. Na sua teorização sobre o estatuto da imagem, Deligny dá a essa recusa uma dimensão ética e política.

_The Arachnean and Other Texts _by Fernand Deligny is a collection of writings from the second half of the 1970s. In 1968 Deligny established a “network” for informally taking care of children with autism that was more than a mere site of living: it was a _milieu_ created out of a reflection on the _mode of being_ autistic. What is a space perceived outside of language? What is the form of a movement without perspective or goal? How (...) do we engage with a world that is not our own, a world turned upside down yet truly common, where _acting_ cohabitates with our actions and the _unknown_ with our forms of knowledge? Such is the mythical web of the “Arachnean,” made of lines, holes, traces, enigmas, and questions without answers that demand to see that which cannot be seen. Long before the digital age of social networks, meshworks, and digital webs, Fernand Deligny speaks to us in his own autobiographical and aphoristic manner. For Deligny, his life was always experienced in the form of “the network as a mode of being.”. (shrink)

The main objective of this work is to discuss the materiality of relationships and experiences of infants in early childhood education, based on a dialogue with the Brazilian curriculum guidelines for Early Childhood Education in 3 municipalities in the state of São Paulo, and with the concepts of technical objects and individuation developed by Simondon. This is a qualitative research that uses bibliographic and documentary research as a methodology and the production of cartographies of scenes in which relationships between babies (...) and objects are observed. The cartography used here is inspired by the records developed by Fernand Deligny (2015) and its appropriation for research with babies, as proposed by Julia Oliveira (2016). Research was carried out on this topic in the field of education, going through scientific articles and guiding documents for early childhood education. The authors mapped the paths and affections of babies and their relationships with objects in two distinct scenes that were collected within the scope of a collective project. It is a work that contributes to early childhood education in general and, specifically, to baby studies (Infantology, Babyhood studies). (shrink)

In this study we use a computational model of language learning called model of syntax acquisition in children (MOSAIC) to investigate the extent to which the optional infinitive (OI) phenomenon in Dutch and English can be explained in terms of a resource-limited distributional analysis of Dutch and English child-directed speech. The results show that the same version of MOSAIC is able to simulate changes in the pattern of finiteness marking in 2 children learning Dutch and 2 children learning English as (...) the average length of their utterances increases. These results suggest that it is possible to explain the key features of the OI phenomenon in both Dutch and English in terms of the interaction between an utterance-final bias in learning and the distributional characteristics of child-directed speech in the 2 languages. They also show how computational modeling techniques can be used to investigate the extent to which cross-linguistic similarities in the developmental data can be explained in terms of common processing constraints as opposed to innate knowledge of universal grammar. (shrink)

In this study, we apply MOSAIC (model of syntax acquisition in children) to the simulation of the developmental patterning of children's optional infinitive (OI) errors in 4 languages: English, Dutch, German, and Spanish. MOSAIC, which has already simulated this phenomenon in Dutch and English, now implements a learning mechanism that better reflects the theoretical assumptions underlying it, as well as a chunking mechanism that results in frequent phrases being treated as 1 unit. Using 1, identical model that learns from child‐directed (...) speech, we obtain a close quantitative fit to the data from all 4 languages despite there being considerable cross‐linguistic and developmental variation in the OI phenomenon. MOSAIC successfully simulates the difference between Spanish (a pro‐drop language in which OI errors are virtually absent) and obligatory subject languages that do display the OI phenomenon. It also highlights differences in the OI phenomenon across German and Dutch, 2 closely related languages whose grammar is virtually identical with respect to the relation between finiteness and verb placement. Taken together, these results suggest that (a) cross‐linguistic differences in the rates at which children produce OIs are graded, quantitative differences that closely reflect the statistical properties of the input they are exposed to and (b) theories of syntax acquisition need to consider more closely the role of input characteristics as determinants of quantitative differences in the cross‐linguistic patterning of phenomena in language acquisition. (shrink)

Computational models of learning provide an alternative technique for identifying the number and type of chunks used by a subject in a specific task. Results from applying CHREST to chess expertise support the theoretical framework of Cowan and a limit in visual short-term memory capacity of 3–4 looms. An application to learning from diagrams illustrates different identifiable forms of chunk.

Expert chess players, specialized in different openings, recalled positions and solved problems within and outside their area of specialization. While their general expertise was at a similar level, players performed better with stimuli from their area of specialization. The effect of specialization on both recall and problem solving was strong enough to override general expertise—players remembering positions and solving problems from their area of specialization performed at around the level of players 1 standard deviation (SD) above them in general skill. (...) Their problem‐solving strategy also changed depending on whether the problem was within their area of specialization. When it was, they searched more in depth and less in breadth; with problems outside their area of specialization, the reverse. The knowledge that comes from familiarity with a problem area is more important than general purpose strategies in determining how an expert will tackle it. These results demonstrate the link in experts between problem solving and memory of specific experiences and indicate that the search for context‐independent general purpose problem‐solving strategies to teach to future experts is unlikely to be successful. (shrink)

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. Based (...) on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

We standardly evaluate counterfactuals and abilities in temporally asymmetric terms—by keeping the past fixed and holding the future open. Only future events depend counterfactually on what happens now. Past events do not. Conversely, past events are relevant to what abilities one has now in a way that future events are not. Lewis, Sider and others continue to evaluate counterfactuals and abilities in temporally asymmetric terms, even in cases of backwards time travel. I’ll argue that we need more temporally neutral methods. (...) The past shouldn’t always be held fixed, because backwards time travel requires backwards counterfactual dependence. Future events should sometimes be held fixed, because they’re in the causal history of the past, and agents have evidence of them independently of their decisions now. We need temporally neutral methods to maintain connections between causation, counterfactuals and evidence, and if counterfactuals are used to explain the temporal asymmetry of causation. (shrink)

For many years, the game of chess has provided an invaluable task environment for research on cognition, in particular on the differences between novices and experts and the learning that removes these differences, and upon the structure of human memory and its paramaters. The template theory presented by Gobet and Simon based on the EPAM theory offers precise predictions on cognitive processes during the presentation and recall of chess positions. This article describes the behavior of CHREST, a computer implementation of (...) the template theory, in a memory task when the presentation time is varied from one second to sixty, on the recall of game and random positions, and compares the model to human data. Strong players are better than weak players in both types of positions, especially with long presentation times, but even after brief presentations. CHREST predicts the data, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Strong players' superiority with random positions is explained by the large number of chunks they hold in LTM. Their excellent recall with short presentation times is explained by templates, a special class of chunks. CHREST is compared to other theories of chess skill, which either cannot account for the superiority of Masters in random positions or predict too strong a performance of Masters in such positions. (shrink)

The Poetic Structure of the World is a major reconsideration of a crucial turningpoint in Western thought and culture: the heliocentric revolution of Copernicus and Kepler. FernandHallyn treats the work of these two figures not simply in terms of the history of science orastronomy, but as events embedded in a wider field of images, symbols, texts, and practices. Thesenew representations of the universe, he insists, cannot be explained by recourse to explanations of"genius" or "intuition."Instead, Hallyn investigates the problem of how (...) new scientific hypothesesare actually formed and the complex way in which certain facts and not others are selected tosupport a particular theory. He contends that the scientific imagination is not fundamentallydifferent from a mythic or poetic imagination and that the work of Copernicus and Kepler must beexamined on the level of rhetorical structure. Hallyn shows the sun-centered universe to beinseparable from the aesthetic, epistemological, theological, and social imperatives of bothneoplatonism and mannerism in the sixteenth centuryFernand Hallyn is a Professor in the Departmentof French Literature at the University of Ghent. Distributed for Zone Books. (shrink)

Nosso estudo retoma contribuições de Georges Bataille, Pierre Verger, Edgar Morin, Ronilda Iyakemi Ribeiro, Stefania Capone, Monique Augras com vistas a discutir Exu, deus nagô e dos terreiros de umbanda, ambíguo e paradoxal, macho e fêmea, sagrado e profano. Responsável pela ordem do universo tem caráter virulento, atrevido e sem vergonha. Vindo ao mundo com um porrete mágico, metonímia de seu falo ereto, choca o decoro, a moral e a cristandade. Constrange os proscritos e as normas, embaralha as dicotomias bem (...) marcadas do Ocidente. Rompe com os tabus e estabelece nova ordem, ação erótico-sagrada que remete à árvore da vida e ao gozo fértil de Exu. Quem incita à Vida é Exu, deus trickster a convidar: vem. Trabalharemos com textos de gêneros diversos, a saber, conto, poema, tela, fotografia para que deles salte um perigoso ambivalente como Madame Satã, Maria Navalha, Zé Pelintra, faces de Exu: travesti, travesso, erótico-sagrado, híbrido, cujas metamorfoses continuas plagiam a si mesmo, podendo até ser visto em calendário trans. (shrink)

Do time travellers retain their normal freedom and abilities when they travel back in time? Lewis, Horwich and Sider argue that they do. Time-travelling Tim can kill his young grandfather, his younger self, or whomever else he pleases—and so, it seems can reasonably deliberate about whether to do these things. He might not succeed. But he is still just as free as a non-time traveller. I’ll disagree. The freedom of time travellers is limited by a rational constraint. Tim can’t reasonably (...) deliberate on killing his grandfather, certain that he’ll fail. If Tim follows his evidence, and appropriately self-predicts, he will be certain he won’t kill his grandfather. So if Tim is both evidentially and deliberatively rational, he can’t deliberate on killing his grandfather. This result has consequences. Firstly, it shows how evidential limits in the actual world contribute to our conception of the future as open. Secondly, it undercuts arguments against the possibility of time travel. Thirdly, it affects how we evaluate counterfactuals in time travel worlds, as well as our own. I’ll use the constraint to motivate an evidential and temporally neutral method of evaluating counterfactuals that holds fixed what a relevant deliberating agent has evidence of, independently of her decision. Using this method, an agent’s local abilities may be affected by what happens globally at other times, including the future. (shrink)

Ce texte a paru initialement dans ANNALES ESC. Vol. 13, n° 4, oct.-déc. 1958, p. 725-753, puis a été réédité dans Écrits sur l'histoire, Paris, Flammarion, 1969. p. 44-83. Il est également disponible, mais dans une version assez fautive, ici. Il y a crise générale des sciences de l'homme : elles sont toutes accablées sous leurs propres progrès, ne serait-ce qu'en raison de l'accumulation des connaissances nouvelles et de la nécessité d'un travail collectif, dont l'organisation intelligente reste à mettre (...) (...) - Histoire – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Understanding how look-ahead search and pattern recognition interact is one of the important research questions in the study of expert problem solving. This paper examines the implications of the template theory Gobet & Simon, 1996a , a recent theory of expert memory, on the theory of problem solving in chess. Templates are chunks Chase & Simon, 1973 that have evolved into more complex data structures and that possess slots allowing values to be encoded rapidly. Templates may facilitate search in three (...) ways: a by allowing information to be stored into LTM rapidly; b by allowing a search in the template space in addition to a search in the move space; and c by compensating loss in the minds eye due to interference and decay. A computer model implementing the main ideas of the theory is presented, and simulations of its search behaviour are discussed. The template theory accounts for the slight skill difference in average depth of search found in chess players, as well as for other empirical data. (shrink)

Fundamental physics makes no clear use of causal notions; it uses laws that operate in relevant respects in both temporal directions and that relate whole systems across times. But by relating causation to evidence, we can explain how causation fits in to a physical picture of the world and explain its temporal asymmetry. This paper takes up a deliberative approach to causation, according to which causal relations correspond to the evidential relations we need when we decide on one thing in (...) order to achieve another. Tamsin's taking her umbrella is a cause of her staying dry, for example, if and only if her deciding to take her umbrella for the sake of staying dry is adequate grounds for believing she'll stay dry. This correspondence explains why causation matters: knowledge of causal structure helps us make decisions that are evidence of outcomes we seek. The account also explains why we can control the future and not the past, and why causes come before their effects. When agents properly deliberate, their decisions can never count as evidence for any outcomes they may seek in the past. From this it follows that causal relations don't run backwards. This deliberative asymmetry is itself traced back to asymmetries of evidence and entropy, providing a new way of deriving causal asymmetry from temporally symmetric laws. (shrink)

À crescente valorização do estatuto da informação, pelo menos desde o final do século XIX, articularam-se diferentes momentos de seu exame, uso e entendimentos. Pode-se dizer que a trajetória das interrogações e respostas sobre a informação co-responderam, no sentido de que responderam juntamente e em cada tempo, aos modos de sociabilidade, de produção e distribuição de bens e conhecimentos, às inovações tecnológicas e ao pensamento filosófico. A afirmação de Nietzsche (1994, p. 100, tradução livre nossa) de que "[...] só se (...) pode definir o que não tem história", parece indicar, como no caso da informação, uma historicidade própria dos conceitos, que condensam, apresentam e ocultam disputas de construção de realidade por significações. (shrink)

Vivemos uma época expressivamente marcada pelo avanço sem precedentes de intervenções tecnocientíficas como resultado de um desenvolvimento histórico de visões naturalistas auto-objetivadoras do homem nos moldes físico-matemáticos das Ciências Naturais. Hans Georg Gadamer nos apresenta em vários momentos da arquitetônica de seu pensamento uma compreensão da experiência hermenêutica como uma proposta ao cientificismo objetificador, fundando-a no mundo-da-vida e reconhecendo-a na prática cotidiana das relações intersubjetivas ultrapassando o campo metodológico da ciência moderna. Analisaremos nas páginas que se seguem a posição de (...) tal autor diante da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao debate contemporâneo acerca da possibilidade de uma ética para uma sociedade marcada pelo progresso técnico, partindo da compreensão da dimensão ética da hermenêutica. (shrink)

Reichenbach explains temporally asymmetric phenomena by appeal to entropy and ‘branch structure’. He explains why the entropic gradients of isolated subsystems are oriented towards the future and not the past, and why we have records of the past and not the future, by appeal to the fact that the universe is currently on a long entropic upgrade with subsystems that branch off and become quasi-isolated. Reichenbach’s approach has been criticised for relying too closely on entropy. The more popular approach nowadays (...) is to appeal instead to a particular low-entropy initial state—Albert’s ‘Past Hypothesis’. I’ll argue that this neglect of Reichenbach’s approach is unwarranted. A Reichenbachian account has important advantages over Albert’s: it correctly identifies the minimal temporally asymmetric posit needed to derive key temporally asymmetries and it offers a more adequate account of the record asymmetry. While a Reichenbachian account needs to be supplemented, it provides the right foundations for explaining temporally asymmetric phenomena and what we might ultimately mean by ‘the direction of time’. (shrink)