answering this quest/question about questioning is precisely what the rest of this
book attempts to do.
In the remaining pages of this introductory chapter, I will introduce some of
the main themes that will be taken up in the chapters of this book. I will begin by
briefly outlining some of the main characteristics of non-representational theory
and some of the key contemporary issues that non-representational theory high-
lights. Next, I will consider some of the theoretical and practical issues that the
book throws up. Then, finally, I will parse each of the individual chapters, bringing
out some of their common problematics.
Non-representational theory
This is a book based on the leitmotif of movement in its many forms. Thus, to
begin with, it would be possible to argue that human life is based on and in move-
ment. Indeed, it might be argued that it is the human capacity for such complex
movements and the accompanying evolution of movement as an enhanced
attractor^11 that has produced the reason for much of our rhizomatic, acentred
brain. Then, movement captures the animic flux of life and especially an onto-
genesis^12 which undoes a dependence on the preformed subject; ‘every creature,
as it “issues forth” and trails behind, moves in its characteristic way’ (Ingold 2006:
15). Then again, movement captures the joy – I will not say simple – of living
as a succession of luminous or mundane instants. Though it is possible, even easy,
to get carried away by an emphasis on presence, closeness, and tangibility, and
by a corresponding desire to do more than simply squeeze meaning from the
world, still we can think of the leitmotif of movement as a desire for a presence
which escapes a consciousness-centred core of self-reference;^13 ‘Rather than have
to think, always and endlessly, what else there could be, we sometimes seem to
connect with a layer in our existence that simply wants the things of the world
close to our skin’ (Gumbrecht 200 4 : 106). And, finally and relatedly, movement
captures a certain attitude to life as potential; ‘to pose the problem is to invent
and not only to dis-cover; it is to create, in the same movement, both the problem
and its solution’ (Alliez 200 4 b: 113).
Non-representational theory takes the leitmotif of movement and works with
it as a means of going beyond constructivism. As a way of summarizing its now
increasingly diverse character,^14 I will point to seven of its main tenets. First, non-
representational theory tries to capture the ‘onflow’,^15 as Ralph Pred (2005) calls
it, of everyday life. It therefore follows the anti-substantialist ambition of philo-
sophies of becoming and philosophies of vitalist intuition equally – and their
constant war on frozen states.^16 That means that it has a lot of forebears, of course.
These forebears hardly agreed on everything, to put it but mildly, and not least
on the status of intention and intentionality. So I will need to take a little time
to more carefully specify what I mean. I think that this can be boiled down to
three propositions. One is that the most effective approach will be one that is
faithful to a radical empiricism that differs – radically – from a sense-perception or
observation-based empiricism. As must be clear, that means that although I respect
Life, but not as we know it 5