Becoming Animal of Philosophy: Pragmatism, Pragrammatology, Speculative Pragmatism

I argue that American pragmatism can be understood as an effort to recuperate a sense of the animality thought and thus example what Deleuze Guattari call “becoming animal” within field philosophy. At issue in this becoming animal is influence Charles Peirce’s theory abduction on history from its origins more recent reception Jacques Derrida’s (pra)grammatology Brian Massumi’s speculative pragmatism. Predicated evolutionary notion instinct source language, thought, inquiry, creative inference, or “abduction” he called it, has allowed generations pragmatists begin “shaking philosophy’s dust off their feet following wild” (James); recognize origin something like “the movements wild creature toward goal” (Dewey); define intellectual inquiry “doing comes naturally” (Fish), pursue such “without method” (Rorty). Emerging under ostensible heading new “humanism”, exceeds Derrida calls anthropological limit” very start, relieving humanism exclusive claim logocentrism by reinscribing question if not logos kingdom. Yet unlike Derrida, whose rejection biological continuism name difference prevents him committing fully logic abduction, Massumi able rehabilitate foundation for his result commitment processual ontology rejects binary oppositions favor “disjunctive syntheses” “zones indiscernibility.” Article received: April 15, 2020; accepted: July 1, Published online: 2021; Original scholarly paper