Explores the continuities and discontinuities in the work of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. Bergson-Deleuze Encounters sheds light on the intricate bond between French philosophers Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. It explores the major diffraction between the two thinkers, conveys a sense of the irreducible originality of Deleuze's thought, and offers a detailed account of Bergson's "Copernican Revolution." In so doing, it presents an explanation of thought and experience that contrasts with the dominant account of the phenomenological tradition. Valentine Moulard-Leonard argues that Bergson and Deleuze share a novel conception of the transcendental-which they call the Virtual-that marks a new era in thinking, in which what is ultimately at stake is a new vision of time, experience, and materiality. The Virtual provides an indispensable alternative to the totalizing systems spawned by the traditional transcendent image of thought-be they systems of idealism, scientific positivism, nationalism, racism, sexism, or dogmatism.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction. Virtual Empiricism: The Revaluation of the Transcendental Briefly Mapping Our Experimental Journey 1. Bergson’s Genealogy of Consciousness: Freedom and Pure Perception The Immediate Data of Consciousness: Time and Free Will Emerging Consciousness:The Role of the Body From Psychology to Metaphysics: Pure Perception and Beyond 2. Introducing Memory: From the Psychological to the Virtual Bergsonian Dualisms—Memory and the Brain: Which Survival? Folding Over: The Psychological Is Also Necessarily Virtual 3. The Unconscious as Ontology of the Virtual From Dualism to Difference The Élan Vital or the Ontologization of Duration Memory as Virtual Coexistence Sense and Sensibility: Bergsonian Positivism 4. Between Bergson and Deleuze: The Method of Intuition as Transcendental/Virtual Empiricism Absolute Movement and Intuition Intuition and Superior Empiricism 5. Cinematic Thought: The Deleuzean Image and the Crystals of Time Why the Cinema? Toward the Crystal-Image: A Vision of the Genesis of Time 6. Proust and Thought: Death, Art, and the Adventures of the Involuntary Death Is the Truth of Thought How Might Death Be Put to Work? Art as the Production of Essences Conclusion. Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Machinic Becomings and Virtual Materialsm First Question: What Does Deleuze Find in Bergson? Second Question: Why the Image? Third Question: Why Read Deleuze after Bergson? Fourth Question: Which Machinic Becomings? Closing Notes References Index