A process-inspired approach to understanding language and the world through the work of Alfred North Whitehead

Do we really know how words actually refer to things, how they describe the world? These questions are not limited to the study of language. They quickly lead to important debates about the character of existence and subjectivity, and they are also linked to wider questions about gender and the status of capitalism.
Michael Halewood uses ideas from analytic philosophy and continental philosophy as well as social theory to look at the relation of language to the world, and the world to language. Primarily using the work of the innovative British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, but also incorporating the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey and Luce Irigaray, he argues that viewing both the world and language as 'in process' can help reframe and move beyond some enduring problems and shed new light for future research.
Michael Halewood is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex.

Michael Halewood is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. He is the author of Rethinking the Social through Durkheim, Marx, Weber and Whitehead (Anthem Press, 2014) and A. N. Whitehead and Social Theory: Tracing a Culture of Thought (Anthem Press, 2011). He is co-editor of Butler on Whitehead (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). He is the translator of The Lure of Possibilities by Didier Debaise (Duke University Press, 2017).

Preface

1. Introduction: The Problem of Words and Things


2. Nouns, Names and Signs: From Frege to Saussure


3. Adjectives: The Properties of the World and the 'Bifurcation of Nature'


4. Verbs: Deleuze on Infinitives, Events and Process


5. Adverbs: Dewey on the Qualities of Existence


6. Prepositions: Whitehead on the Withness of the Body


7. Gender and Personal Pronouns: She, He, It and They


8. Tone, Force and Rhetoric: Capitalism, Theology and Grammar

Conclusion

Bibliography