The Arachnean and Other Texts

2013
Author:

Fernand Deligny

 

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Catherine Porter

The network as a mode of being

The Arachnean and Other Texts by Fernand Deligny (1913–1996) is a collection of writings from the second half of the 1970s. Long before the digital age of social networks, meshworks, and digital webs, Fernand Deligny speaks to us in his own autobiographical and aphoristic manner, always experiencing life in the form of “the network as a mode of being.”

The Arachnean and Other Texts by Fernand Deligny (1913–1996) is a collection of writings from the second half of the 1970s. In 1968 Deligny established a “network” for informally taking care of children with autism that was more than a mere site of living: it was a milieu created out of a reflection on the mode of being autistic. What is a space perceived outside of language? What is the form of a movement without perspective or goal? How do we engage with a world that is not our own, a world turned upside down yet truly common, where acting cohabitates with our actions and the unknown with our forms of knowledge? Such is the mythical web of the “Arachnean,” made of lines, holes, traces, enigmas, and questions without answers that demand to see that which cannot be seen. Long before the digital age of social networks, meshworks, and digital webs, Fernand Deligny speaks to us in his own autobiographical and aphoristic manner. For Deligny, his life was always experienced in the form of “the network as a mode of being.”

Fernand Deligny was a filmmaker, writer, activist, and educator whose work drew interest from prominent thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Michel de Certeau. His writings on networks as a mode of being are now coming to the forefront in academic fields.

Drew S. Burk is a cultural theorist, editor, and translator of contemporary French philosophy.

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