The Work-In-Process seminar series aims to provide a space for regular exchange between researchers working on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. In this session, James Kearns will present on “‘Seeing Human Nature’: A. N. Whitehead and Jason Brown’s differing patterns of Feeling in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway”

By revisiting the limitations of the dominant cognitivist hypothesis through which brain process is understood via computational modelling, James examines two apparently opposing (yet “continuous”) accounts of the philosophy of organism in Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel, Mrs Dalloway—Alfred North Whitehead’s process of “concrescence,” a “coming together” (as it were) of the many into one, and Jason Brown’s formulation of microgenetic theory which presumes individuation, not combination, that is to say, a cognitive process of whole-to-part transition, or one into many. Bringing to the forefront the “valuation” of Septimus Warren Smith who, according to Woolf, “was invented to complete the character of Mrs Dalloway,” James argues that Clarissa Dalloway’s mode of fictionalising Septimus post-mortem is not only an operating factor in what constitutes “self-completion,” a term provided by Brown to express a recurring process through which our emotional response to objects and others in the external world may be said to mirror or to supplement our needs, but, ultimately, a mode by which Woolf herself comes to memorialise the early death of her brother, Thoby Stephen.

The seminar is completely free and we welcome everyone regardless of their academic position. If you want to present your own work or simply attend the seminar, please get in touch with espt@milanstuermer.com to register.