If p, then what? Thinking in cases

My research at present centres on a large and hence necessarily long-term project that I call, depending on the occasion, either ’Thinking in Cases’ or ’The History and Philosophy of the Case’. The project started, like most large branching structures that threaten to get out of their author’s control, from small seedlings. Or perhaps, to alter the botanical metaphor, it started from three rhizomes, which have now intertwined, out of the public view, into a tangled network of themes and variations. I will attempt an exposition of my work in this field by describing the three rhizomes, which also necessarily involves some intellectual autobiography; I will go on to show how the network has become ever more complex and difficult to map; finally, I will ask your help in the task of managing, perhaps even pruning, the proliferation of the topics raised. So I will welcome enthusiasm for the project, but I will be even more eager to hear how paring, thinning out and even inhibiting of growth can be implemented. The three rhizomic structures I will call, for simplicity’s sake: the psychoanalytic case history; the historical sociology of the sciences; the individual in the human sciences.

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