No Thought for a Concept

The creation of a concept is not the act of a mentality.

It is also not an intellectual accomplishment.

It is not an intellectual pursuit to create a concept, and I go one step further: to make it be an intellectual pursuit is to thwart concept creation, it is to collapse concept creation down into something literary.

(I don’t mean to belittle the literary – but if the intention is concept creation and what’s achieved is instead something literary, that’s failure.)

I think concept creation may be harshly anti-intellectual and maybe that’s a reason it hasn’t gained any traction…Intellectuals are the only ones who are going to be interested in it, but the very nature of their interest is going to thwart it happening…

One cannot thumb through Deleuze and Guattari or anywhere else to pick up helpful hints on concept creation which can then be pasted together or somehow otherwise formulated in order to make a concept-creation guidebook. (A guidebook called, Concept Creation for Beginners.)

A concept does not order or stabilize.

It is not a firm plank upon which perceptions could be verified, validated, recognized, communicated. The concept would get things moving – would be very distinct from that which offers the prospects of a sedentary gaze-- and it would wipe away that peculiar cast of the mind where everything seems perfectly explained, with all the answers in, as if what’s OUT THERE is the normal, the natural, perfect way for the world to be.

Image: A Secret Place, by Heather Nevay.