The limits of process: On (re)reading Henri Bergson

This article offers a reading of the work of Henri Bergson as it pertains to organizations through the lens of ideas drawn from critical realism. It suggests an alternative to interpretations based on a stark division between process and realist perspectives. Much of the existing literature presents a rather partial view of Bergson’s work. A review suggests some interesting parallels with themes in critical realism, notably the emergence of mind. Critical realism has a focus on process at its heart, but is also concerned with how the products of such processes become stabilized and form the conditions for action. This suggests that attention might usefully be paid to the relationship between organizational action and the sedimented practices grouped under the heading of ‘routines’. More attention to Bergson’s account of the relationship between instinct, intuition and intelligence provides a link to the social character of thought, something which can be mapped on to Archer’s work on reflexivity and the ‘internal conversation’. This suggests that our analyses need to pay attention to both memory and history, to building and dwelling, rather than the one-sided focus found in some process theory accounts

Managing stress through the Stress Free app: Practices of self-care in digitally mediated spaces

In this paper we are concerned with the question of how we feel when living in concert with multiple technologies. More specifically, we are focused on the influx of digital apps designed to manage psychological wellbeing. We draw on empirical work exploring one such app, Stress Free, and focus on the experiences of stress and technological tools designed to lessen stress. Our concern is with the way that technologies become part of the experience of stress as opposed to solely understanding the app as a tool aimed to reduce the occurrence and severity of stress. This involves taking a theoretical journey through philosophies of technology that provide valuable resources for conceptualising the relational characteristics of digitally mediated stress. Our wider interest is to speak to broader concerns with the movement to ‘digital care’ and the implications for how we conceptualise technology, self and care therein

Spinoza

"Spinoza", second edition. Encyclopedia entry for the Springer Encyclopedia of EM Phil and the Sciences, ed. D. Jalobeanu and C. T. Wolfe

Introduction: the rest is history

This essay considers the award-winning performance of Follow by Irish theatre company, WillFredd Theatre. The essay considers Follow's performance of Irish Deaf collective memory and the importance of forgetting as a salutatory phenomenon for theatre historiography

Creative processes: From interventions in art to intervallic experiments through Bergson

The recent turn to creativity in geography has led to a proliferation of methodological frameworks that enable us to look at and think about the world differently. For the most part, creativity in geography gets mobilised as an artistic endeavour through empirical research with a particular person or product. One implication of this focus is that creativity gets tied to a foundational subject as the instigator of creative practice. In this paper I want to unpack creativity in geography through a particular theoretical lens, in order to explore a wider array of creative agencies. To this end I turn to Henri Bergson, and his very specific notion of creativity as a process of intuition at the interval. Crucially, Bergson offers a way of processually rethinking the corporeality and materiality of creative practice, enabling us to broaden our engagements with creativity so that they are more open to the diverse ways the material world engages us.<br/

Biographical Narratives of Encounter: The Significance of Mobility and Emplacement in Shaping Attitudes towards Difference

This paper is located within work in urban studies about the significance of contact with difference as a means for reducing prejudice and achieving social change. Recent approaches, influenced by theories of affect, have emphasised non-conscious everyday negotiations of difference in the city. In this paper it is argued that such approaches lose sight of the significance of the subject: of the reflective judgements of ‘others’ made by individuals; of our ability to make decisions around the control of our feelings and identifications; and of the significance of personal pasts and collective histories in shaping the ways we perceive and react to encounters. Rather, this paper uses a biographical approach focusing on interviewees’ narratives of encounter. Through its attention to processes of mobility and emplacement, it contributes to debates about when contact with difference matters by highlighting the importance of everyday social normativities in the production of moral dispositions