Bergson and the Art of Immanence

John Mullarkey is Professor of Film and Television at Kingston University. He previously taught at the University of Dundee (2004-2010) and the University of Sunderland (1994-2004). He is the author of Bergson and Philosophy (1999), Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006), and Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010), and is an editor of Film-Philosophy and co-editor of The Continuum Companion to Continental Philosophy (2009) as well as Laruelle and Non-Philosophy (2012). John Ó Maoilearca is Professor of Film and TV at Kingston University, London. In 2014, his name reverted from the English ‘Mullarkey’ to the original Irish, ‘Ó Maoilearca’, which ultimately translates as ‘follower of the animal’.Charlotte de Mille is Associate Lecturer at The Courtauld Institute and curates The Courtauld Gallery's music programme. She is co-editor with John O’ Maoilearca of Bergson and the Art of Immanence  (EUP, 2013) and editor of Music and Modernism, c. 1849–1950 (CSP, 2011). The Bloomsbury Handbook to Music and Art, co-edited with Sarah Mahler Kraaz will be published with Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.

• List of Illustrations; Notes on Contributors; Introduction; Art's Philosophy: Bergson and Immanence, Charlotte de Mille and John Ó Maoilearca; I: Bergson, Art, History; 1. Bergson, History and Ontology, Craig Lundy; 2. Art History, Immanently, Charlotte De Mille; 3. Art-history with Less Conditions of Possibility: Following Bergson’s 'Le Possible et le réel', Adi Efal; 4. Matisse, Bergson, Oiticica, etc., Eric Alliez; 5. Bergson Before Deleuze: How to Read informel Painting, Sarah Wilson; 6. Creative Revolution: Bergson, Max Stirner and Art for Insurrection’s Sake, Mark Antliff; II: Unconditional Practice; 7. The Matter of the Image: Notes on Practice-Philosophy, Felicity Colman; 8. Pasearse: Duration and the Act of Photographing, Stella Baraklianou; 9. Duration and Rhetorical Movement, James Day; 10. A Diagram of the Finite-Infinite Relation: Towards a Bergsonian Production of Subjectivity, Simon O’Sullivan; III: Immanence of the Visible; 11. Painting the Invisible: Time, Matter and the Image in Bergson and Michel Henry, Brendan Prendeville; 12. 'For We Will Have Shown it Nothing': Bergson as Non-Philosopher (of) Art, John Ó Maoilearca; 13. The Untimeliness of Bergson’s Metaphysics: Reading Diffractively, Iris van der Tuin; 14. Hyperaesthesia and the Virtual, Howard Caygill; Afterword; An Art Historical Return to Bergson, Jae Emerling; Index.

This collection is focussed on a central problem: the necessity and the difficulty of thinking immanence, of getting within phenomena and reflecting on them as such. Among several concerns, the contributors attempt to bring art history to its true vocation, which is not only preservation but the provoking of new insights. Towards this goal the clarity of these essays is equalled by their vitality.