Philosophy of the imagination: time, immanence and the events that wound us in Wilson Harris’s Jonestown

Abstract

In his fictional recreation of the People’s Temple massacre, Jonestown, Harris presents us with a protagonist who counter-actualizes the trauma that wounds him, living creatively out of the event and constructing an alternative present-future. Drawing on Deleuzian philosophy, this essay argues for a re-conceptualization of Jonestown in terms that evoke not only Deleuze’s philosophy of time and immanence but also his distinction, via Nietzsche, between active and reactive forces. By means of a character (Francisco Bone) who embraces the power of transformation, creation and difference-in-itself, Harris demonstrates the value of active forces that do not depend on external recognition or dialectical negation in order to be for a postcolonial philosophy of the imagination.

Keywords:

• Jonestown
• Wilson Harris
• Gilles Deleuze
• the event
• time
• immanence

Notes

1. For a detailed commentary on this shift, see Mullarkey.

2. This paraphrases Deleuze: “in Bergson [ … ] the thing differs with itself first, immediately. According to Hegel, the thing differs with itself because it differs first with all that it is not” (in Hardt 7; emphasis original).

3. For commentary on the importance of this distinction for postcolonial thought, see Burns (113–16).

4. Soyinka’s argument that negritude trapped “itself in what was primarily a defensive role” (129) and “stayed within a pre-set system of Eurocentric intellectual analysis” (136) highlights this point: counter-colonial discourse is trapped within a “pre-set system” in which the black man is cast as other.

5. James discusses Harris in light of Heidegger (157–72); Shaw cites Hegel as a more significant influence (141–51). Andrew Benjamin draws on Nietzsche to explore the relevance of repetition rather than dialectical negation in The Eye of the Scarecrow.