Structuralism and Post-structuralism Books

Book SynopsisNarrating some lesser known episodes from the deep history of digital machines, Alexander R. Galloway explains the technology that drives the world today, and the fascinating people who brought these machines to life. With an eye to both the computable and the uncomputable, Galloway shows how computation emerges or fails to emerge, how the digital thrives but also atrophies, how networks interconnect while also fray and fall apart. By re-building obsolete technology using today's software, the past comes to light in new ways, from intricate algebraic patterns woven on a hand loom, to striking artificial-life simulations, to war games and back boxes. A description of the past, this book is also an assessment of all that remains uncomputable as we continue to live in the aftermath of the long digital age.Trade ReviewGalloway's work is conceptually sharp, visually compelling and completely attuned to the political moment. * New York Times *An engaging methodological hybrid of the Frankfurt School and UNIX for Dummies. Galloway brings the uncool question of morality back into critical thinking. * Village Voice *Praise for Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture:This is contemporary media theory at its best. -- Lev Manovich, Professor of Computer Science, CUNY Graduate CenterThe Interface Effect builds on the work of Marxist critical theorists such as Fredric Jameson, new media scholars such as Wendy Chun, and Galloway's own work in earlier books such as Protocol. An interface, for him, becomes a technique for thought: an 'allegorical device' that makes the social world accessible in an age of information. The Interface Effect raises many critical questions about the ways that contemporary human beings mediate a historical present that invariably eludes us. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Employing a sustained, powerful methodology, The Interface Effect sparkles with original insights. Galloway is interested not only in the effects that interfaces have, but also in them as themselves the results of cultural, technological, economic, and political forces. This double movement provides a way to connect the historical with the political, and the technological with both. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in new media studies, contemporary theory, and digital technologies. -- N. Katherine Hayles, Professor of Literature, Duke UniversityGalloway's theorisation of the computer as a mode of mediation offers rich possibilities for the critical analysis of the digital. * Radical Philosophy *The Interface Effect fuses sophisticated contemporary theory with a detailed knowledge of the technics and techniques of digital media. Galloway is an important voice, and the book is sure to have a wide uptake among those interested in new media theory and contemporary aesthetics. -- Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith CollegesPraise for The Exploit:Essential reading for all theorists, artists, activists, techheads, and hackers of the Net. -- McKenzie Wark, Professor of Culture and Media, The New SchoolAlexander Galloway's Uncomputable is a brilliant counter-history of some of the technological worlds we are all currently inhabiting. In this enthralling genealogy of computation, we encounter a refreshingly unfamiliar constellation of marginalized or overlooked practices, theories, artifacts and individual innovators. -- Jonathan CraryHow to translate political struggle into algorithm? How to transpose material entanglement into executable operations? What is the relation between passion, heartbreak and mathematics and what are the losses incurred by moving in-between them? Alexander Galloway's intelligent and delicate treatise draws out the tensions between matter and thought, the invisible and the sharp impact of historical manifestation, the palpable and the operational and these other, unspeakable things and situations, that keep evading through the cracks, shining. -- Hito SteyerlThrough a series of wonderfully surprising hidden histories of computation, Galloway provides a radically different perspective on the digital age and computational media, illuminating its limitations and its possibilities. -- Michael HardtAt a historical moment characterized by totalizing forms of data-capture, rabid machine learning algorithms, and the colonization of everyday life by the logics of computation and capital, Galloway asks a pointed question: "What if things were otherwise?" Using case studies from across the arts, humanities, and sciences, Uncomputable shows the alternate pathways of history, and provides a glimpse towards a theory, practice, and politics of radical refusal whose timeliness could not be more relevant. -- Trevor Paglen

Read more less

Book SynopsisOne is not born a worker or a boss, one becomes one from father to son... or almost. Social reproduction is not an iron law; it admits of exceptions that must be accounted for in order to measure its scope. This book aims to understand the passage from one social class to another and to forge a method of approaching these particular cases which remain a blind spot in the theory of social reproduction. It analyzes the political, economic, social, familial and singular causes that contribute to non-reproduction, and their effects on the constitution of individuals transiting from one class to another.At the crossroads of collective history and intimate history, Chantal Jaquet identifies class locations, the interplay of affects and encounters, and the role of sexual and racial differences. She invites us to break out of disciplinary isolation in order to grasp singularity at the crossroads of philosophy, sociology, psychology and literature. This requires deconstruction of the concepts of social and personal identity, in favour of a concepts like complexion and the criss-crossing determinations. Through the figure of the transclass, it is thus the whole human condition that is illuminated in a new light.Trade ReviewTransclasses sets out to fill a lacuna created by the impoverished vocabulary of class by theorizing the class identities of "exceptional" subjects who defy the predictions of social determinism and leave their formative social status behind. Terms of stigma - parvenu, careerist, déclassé, class defector - are used to socially shame such subjects, but as Jaquet demonstrates, to hew to these caricatural typologies is to miss out on the power of class transitioning at the microscales of lived experience and in an intersectional frame. If we have been used to thinking, with Althusser, in terms of the reproduction of capitalism, Jaquet goes one further, producing a model of non-reproductive modes of existence that, far from superseding class or ignoring the reproductive drive of capital, expand their conceptual parameters. An experiment in concept-work that draws on self-narration in literature and auto-ethnography (from Stendhal to Richard Wright, Pierre Bourdieu, Annie Ernaux and Didier Eribon), Transclasses will be essential reading for interdisciplinary fieldworkers committed to new lexicons of identity, class struggle and social change. -- Emily Apter, New York University, author of Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Impasse and the Impolitic (Verso, 2018)For more than a half-century sociologists, political theorists and scholars in the humanities have addressed the question of how a social order reproduces itself, above all, the relations of exploitation and domination that characterize it. Chantal Jaquet, whose studies of Spinoza have helped transform our understanding of that difficult philosopher, asks us instead to examine the phenomenon of non-reproduction, that is, the production of those who fail to fulfil or who resist the roles and functions to them. Her path-breaking work should be read by all those interested in understanding social transformation. -- Warren Montag

Read more less

Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023This book presents an encompassing, detailed and thorough overview and reconstruction of Lefebvre's theory of space and of the urban. Henri Lefebvre belongs to the generation of the great French intellectuals and philosophers, together with his contemporaries Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. His theory has experienced a remarkable revival over the last two decades, and is discussed and applied today in many disciplines in humanities and social sciences, particularly in urban studies, geography, urban sociology, urban anthropology, architecture and planning. Lefebvre, together with David Harvey, is one of the leading and most read theoreticians in these fields. This book explains in an accessible way the theoretical and epistemological context of this work in French philosophy and in the German dialectic (Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), and reconstructs in detail the historical development of its different elements. It also gives an overview on the receptions of Lefebvre and discusses a wide range of applications of this theory in many research fields, such as urban and regional development, urbanization, urbanity, social space, and everyday life.Trade ReviewChristian Schmid's reception and interpretation of Lefebvre's oeuvre refers strictly to the French originals and represents the first comprehensive epistemological reconstruction of the theory of the production of space. On that basis many of the previous confusions in the development of a critical spatial theory are clarified. This is where I see the highest significance of this path-breaking publication. -- Prof. Dr. Benno Werlen, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, GermanySchmid's publication is a superb theoretical treatise on Lefebvre, clarifying many common misunderstandings. It is particularly timely for those urban China researchers who are keen to avoid past mistakes of randomly indigenising and appropriating Western concepts and develop locally relevant theories in fruitful conversation with critical urban research. -- Prof. Dr. Wing-Shing Tang, Hong Kong Baptist UniversityChristian Schmid provides us with a wonderfully lucid guide through the complexity and richness of Henri Lefebvre's oeuvre. Among the many contributions of the book is the powerful new light it sheds on Lefebvre's spatio-historical and dialectical theory of society. Without question, it opens up vital new possibilities for a renewal of social theory, empirical research and political practice. -- Gillian HartChristian Schmid's carefully translated and strategically updated volume offers the most comprehensive reconstruction of Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space available in the English language today. On the basis of an unusually methodical discussion of the various intellectual currents that converge in Henri Lefebvre's vast life work, Schmid gives us crucial insights about the deeply dynamic and richly multidimensional ways in which space is produced. Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space constitutes mandatory reading for a wide audience ranging from specialists of 20th century social theory to thoughtful political organizers and practitioners of urban research. -- Stefan Kipfer, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York UniversityIn this authoritative book, Christian Schmid systematically reconstructs Henri Lefebvre's theory of space production as a general theory of the urban society. By critically expanding the German-language original, this volume shows both the basis and the outcome of four decades of Schmid's thinking and studying cities with Lefebvre. -- Lukasz Stanek, University of Michigan, Ann ArborChristian Schmid has written the most meticulous, comprehensive and lucid interpretation of French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre's incomparable oeuvre on space. Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space is distinguished above all by Schmid's imaginative grasp of Lefebvre's dialectical method, especially in exploring spatial mediations of everyday life, state and capital. This book will be essential and exhilarating reading for anyone interested in how space is political. -- Kanishka Goonewardena, Geography and Planning, University of TorontoIn an age of planetary urban transformation, crisis and insurgency, Henri Lefebvre's ideas continue to inspire radical urban research and practice around the world. In this long-awaited translation and elaboration of a work originally published in German over two decades ago, Christian Schmid offers a comprehensive reconstruction and systematic interpretation of Lefebvre's philosophy of space, framed in direct relation to the challenges of deciphering ongoing patterns and pathways of urban restructuring, their contradictions and their potentialities. In so doing, makes a path-breaking contribution to radical urban theory. -- Neil Brenner

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA progressive reading of the history of the unknown that projects a hopeful future.Trade ReviewA sizzling, citable line on every page, this is Catherine Keller at her poetic, theopoetic, theological best. She meditates not the fire of the apocalypse, nor the water of the deep, but the cloud-of the impossible which precipitates the possible itself, the entanglement of knowing and nonknowing, of the relational and what overflows relation, of the enfolding and the unfolding. For her, the name of God is not the name of a cause or a guarantee but the lure of something that needs to be made and done. From philosophy and theology to physics and ecology-a sensational tour de force from a major theological voice. -- John D. Caputo, Syracuse University and Villanova University At last! A negative theology that plies the complex requirements of planetary life. Long intent on crafting ways of thinking theologically that resist common and oversimplified oppositions between divine and fleshy things, Catherine Keller leads us via ancient, medieval, and recent traditions of unsaying certainties into a rich understanding of divine entanglement as a basis for communal thriving and just democracy. This is a monumental contribution to Christian theology, especially regarding its foundational claims of divine embodiment and love. -- Laurel C. Schneider, Vanderbilt University Catherine Keller is our most creative and profound theologian today, and this book is her richest to date, tracking the enfolding and unfolding relation of everything to everything with theopoetic brilliance. -- Gary Dorrien, author of Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology Catherine Keller's nuanced consideration of the apophatic cloud is both true to its subject and marvelously lucid. Tracing unexpected connections in the thought of medieval theologians, process philosophers, environmental activists, quantum physicists, and more, the book enfolds and unfolds, each line of thought traced with delicate precision, each intersection marked. Out of impossibility itself, enfolded in each and every relation, a new and open possible emerges. Through folds and mirrors, holograms and entanglements, poetry and theology, trauma and joy, this possible-impossible, this luminous darkness, entice us to follow-and to be glad that we did. -- Karmen MacKendrick, Le Moyne College Facing the complex majesty of Cloud of the Impossible, one cannot help but feel like some Moses-manque before a literary Sinai. The prose is finely wrought, tracing the inter- and indeterminacies of a provisionally named 'apophatic entanglement.' This is a beautiful and important book, which traces the contours of a transfigured, queerly-theological discourse and practice--precisely where such a thing might seem impossible. -- Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University With this work, Catherine Keller has produced a masterpiece on the level of her Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. There is something of James Joyce in these pages. Readers are taken through core Hebrew and Greek debates, the emergence of infinity in Patristic theology, Christian and non-Christian mysticism, quantum physics, contemporary poststructuralist philosophy, the plight of theology today, nineteenth-century poetry, the environmental crisis... and that is only a start. Many critics will say that this is her best book yet. -- Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor, Claremont School of Theology Keller's bewildering and creatively beautiful body of work is often more poetry than prose... It is always worth the effort. Christian Century An impressive and astonishing work. Syndicate Theology This is an extraordinary book... Readers will engage an astounding sweep of resources and conversation partners in this book. InterpretationTable of ContentsBefore Part 1: Complications 1. The Dark Nuance of Beginning 2. Cloud-Writing: A Genealogy of the Luminous Dark 3. Enfolding and Unfolding God: Cusanic Complicatio Part 2: Explications 4. Spooky Entanglements: The Physics of Nonseparability 5. The Fold in Process: Deleuze and Whitehead 6. "Unfolded Out of the Folds": Walt Whitman and the Apophatic Sex of the Earth 7. Unsaying and Undoing: Judith Butler and the Ethics of Relational Ontology Part 3: Implications 8. Crusade, Capital, and Cosmopolis: Ambiguous Entanglements 9. Broken Touch: Ecology of the Im/possible 10. In Questionable Love After: Theopoetics of the Cloud Notes Acknowledments Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisOn Extinction takes us on a breathtaking philosophical journey through desperate territory. As we face ‘the end of all things’, Ben Ware argues we must face our apocalyptic future without flinching. In fact, extinction is the very lens through which we should examine our current reality.Radical politics today should not be concerned with merely averting the worst but rather with beginning again at the end. To think about the future in this way is itself a form of liberation that might incubate the necessary radical solutions we need.Combining lessons from Kant, Hegel, Adorno, and Lacan, as well as drawing on popular culture and ecology, Ware recasts the most urgent issue of our times and resolves that we can only consider our collective end by treating it as a starting point.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDifference is one of the most influential critical concepts of recent decades. Mark Currie offers a comprehensive account of the history of the term and its place in some of the most influential schools of theory of the past four decades, including post-structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, psychoanalysis, French feminism and postcolonialism. Employing literary case studies throughout, Difference provides an accessible introduction to a term at the heart of today's critical idiom.Table of ContentsSeries Editor’s Preface, Acknowledgements, 1 Introduction: Identity and difference, 2 Difference and reference, 3 Difference, 4 Different histories, 5 Cultural difference, 6 Difference and equivalence, GLOSSARY, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX

Read more less

Book SynopsisSimon Critchley's first book, The Ethics of Deconstruction, was originally published to great acclaim in 1992. This edition contains three new appendices and a new preface where Critchley reflects upon the origins, motivation and reception of The Ethics of Deconstruction.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFocusing on the philosophical registers of literary texts, Adam Meehan traces the development of modernist attitudes toward subjectivity, particularly in relation to issues of ideology, spatiality, and violence. His analysis explores a selection of works published between 1904 and 1941.

Read more less

Book SynopsisRuth Bader Ginsburg was a legal icon. In more than four decades as a lawyer, professor, appellate judge, and Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Ginsburg influenced the law and society in real and permanent ways. This book chronicles and evaluates the remarkable achievements Ruth Bader Ginsburg made over the last half-century. Including chapters written by prominent court-watchers and leading scholars from law, political science, and history, the book offers diverse perspectives on an array of doctrinal areas and different periods in Ginsburg''s career. Together, these perspectives document the impressive legacy of one of the most important figures in modern law. This updated second edition features a new foreword from Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and a new introduction from the editor Scott Dodson.Trade Review'Scott Dodson presents leading scholars' expert perspectives on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's historic legacy and long-term agenda, both of which continue even after she is gone. Dodson's anthology details how RBG's pathmarking legal years shaped this country's policies and laws. Her dedication and forward-thinking will be memorialized in these pages for future generations to learn from.' Rebecca Gibian, journalist and author of The RBG WayFrom the first edition: 'Scott Dodson, the editor of this volume, has brought together an impressive group of law professors, lawyers, historians, and journalists to write about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy.' Barbara Babcock, Stanford Law School, on SCOTUSblogFrom the first edition: 'The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg artfully chronicles Justice Ginsburg's prolific career and intersperses engaging personal perspectives.' Harvard Law ReviewFrom the first edition: '[A] terrific compilation of essays.' Susan Burgess, Ohio University, in Law & Society ReviewFrom the first edition: 'Now this - this is something that I like.' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in the New York TimesTable of ContentsPart I. Shaping a Legacy: 1. Notes on a life Nina Totenberg; 2. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: law professor extraordinaire Herma Hill Kay; 3. Before Frontiero there was reed: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the constitutional transformation of the twentieth century Linda K. Kerber; 4. Struck by stereotype: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on pregnancy discrimination as sex discrimination Neil S. Siegel and Reva B. Siegel; 5. Beyond the tough guise: Justice Ginsburg's reconstructive feminism Joan C. Williams; Part II. Rights and Remedies: 6. 'Seg Academies,' taxes, and judge Ginsburg Stephen B. Cohen; 7. A more perfect union: sex, race, and the VMI case Cary Franklin; 8. Barriers to entry and justice Ginsburg's criminal procedure jurisprudence Lisa Kern Griffin; 9. A liberal justice's limits: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the American criminal justice system Aziz Z. Huq; Part III. Structuralism: 10. A revolution in jurisdiction Scott Dodson; 11. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the interaction of legal systems Paul Schiff Berman; 12. The once and future federalist Deborah Jones Merritt; Part IV. The Jurist: 13. Reflections on the confirmation journey of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, summer 1993 Robert A. Katzmann; 14. Justice Ginsburg: demosprudence through dissent Lani Guinier; 15. Oral argument as a bridge between the briefs and the court's opinion Tom Goldstein; 16. Fire and ice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the least likely firebrand Dahlia Lithwick; Ginsburg, optimism, and conflict management Scott Dodson; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDrawing on poststructuralist approaches, Craig Martin outlines a theory of discourse, ideology, and domination that can be used by scholars and students to understand these central elements in the study of culture. The book shows how discourses are used to construct social institutionsoften classist, sexist, or racistand that those social institutions always entail a distribution of resources and capital in ways that capacitate some subject positions over others. Such asymmetrical power relations are often obscured by ideologies that offer demonstrably false accounts of why those asymmetries exist or persist. The author provides a method of reading in order to bring matters into relief, and the last chapter provides a case study that applies his theory and method to racist ideologies in the United States, which systematically function to discourage white Americans from sympathizing with poor African Americans, thereby contributing to reinforcing the latter's place at the bottom oTrade ReviewThis book is a gift to students and colleagues who have a passion for theory. Craig Martin has infused his work with rare wit, wisdom, emotion, unique insight, and commitment. * Naomi Goldenberg, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada *In this incredibly impressive work, Craig Martin shows the importance of doing your homework by methodically laying out the philosophical basis for a discursive theory of society. Martin provides a clear path through numerous debates that over-simplistically pit empirical realities against social construction, leading the reader to a far more nuanced and critically viable position. This is a must-read for anyone who considers themselves a scholar of culture. * Leslie Dorrough Smith, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Avila University, USA *“If to study religion is to study how people name and rank their worlds, then it actually studies how power and identity are claimed and contested—and Craig Martin numbers among the best representatives of such a field; Discourse and Ideology makes clear that a critical scholar of religion has much to say about how society works, and why it so often seems to work only for some of its members.” * Russell T. McCutcheon, University Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama, USA *This book succeeds in providing a secure base and guide for scholars to apply a poststructuralist critique of culture, whether focused on religion, politics, gender, race or another category of analysis. * Suzanne Owen, Reader in Religious Studies, Leeds Trinity University, UK *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Contingency 1. Critique 2. Things 3. Discourse 4. Domination 5. Ideology 6. Recrement 7. Case Study: Racist Ideology in the US Coda Bibliography Index

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisOffers a new systematic account of the philosophical potential of Saint Paul's letters.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAnalyzes international and cultural relationships informed by "China," a category that is becoming ever more indispensable and yet unstable in everyday narratives.There have been few efforts to overcome the binary of China versus the West. The recent global political environment, with a deepening confrontation between China and the West, strengthens this binary image. Post-Chineseness boldly challenges the essentialized notion of Chineseness in existing scholarship through the revelation of the multiplicity and complexity of the uses of Chineseness by strategically conceived insiders, outsiders, and those in-between. Combining the fields of international relations, cultural politics, and intellectual history, Chih-yu Shih investigates how the global audience perceives (and essentializes) Chineseness. Shih engages with major Chinese international relations theories, investigates the works of sinologists in Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other academics in East Asia, and explores individual scholars'' life stories and academic careers to delineate how Chineseness is constantly negotiated and reproduced. Shih''s theory of the "balance of relationships" expands the concept of Chineseness and effectively challenges existing theories of realism, liberalism, and conventional constructivism in international relations. The highly original delineation of multiple layers and diverse dimensions of "Chineseness" opens an intellectual channel between the social sciences and humanities in China studies.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis collection brings togethr the work of leading international scholars to provide a multi-disciplinary analysis of Deleuze's theory of temporality.Trade Review"A magnificent book. Deleuze and Time is a compendium of outstanding essays from some of Deleuze's best readers, each addressing, from a different perspective, the fundamental problematic of Deleuze's thought: the being of time itself." -Joe Hughes, University of Melbourne

Read more less

Book SynopsisDemonstrates the embodied foundation of figurative, poetic and literary language and form.

Read more less

Book Synopsis“There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion,” Deleuze and Guattari write in their final collaboration, What Is Philosophy? Their claim that Christianity “secretes” atheism “more than any other religion,” however, reflects the limits of their archive. Theological projects seeking to engage Deleuze remain embedded within Christian theologies and intellectual histories; whether they embrace, resist, or negotiate with Deleuze’s atheism, the atheism in question remains one extracted from Christian theology, a Christian atheism. In Sufi Deleuze, Michael Muhammad Knight offers an intervention, engaging Deleuzian questions and themes from within Islamic tradition. Even if Deleuze did not think of himself as a theologian, Knight argues, to place Deleuze in conversation with Islam is a project of comparative theology and faces the challenge of any comparative theology: It seemingly demands that complex, internally diverse traditions can speak as coherent, monolithic wholes. To start from such a place would not only defy Islam’s historical multiplicity but also betray Deleuze’s model of the assemblage, which requires attention to not only the organizing and stabilizing tendencies within a structure but also the points at which a structure resists organization, its internal heterogeneity, and unpredictable “lines of flight.” A Deleuzian approach to Islamic theology would first have to affirm that there is no such thing as a universal “Islamic theology” that can speak for all Muslims in all historical settings, but rather a multiplicity of power struggles between major and minor forces that contest each other over authenticity, authority, and the making of “orthodoxy.” The discussions in Sufi Deleuze thus highlight Islam’s extraordinary range of possibilities, not only making use of canonically privileged materials such as the Qur’an and major hadith collections, but also exploring a variety of marginalized resources found throughout Islam that challenge the notion of a singular “mainstream” interpretive tradition. To say it in Deleuze’s vocabulary, Islam is a rhizome.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Secrets and Secretions | 1 1 Deleuze and Tafsir: Th e Rhizomatic Qur’an | 25 2 People of the Sunna and the Assemblage: Deleuzian Hadith Theory | 61 3 Beyond Theology: Sufism as Arrangement and Affect | 84 4 The Immanence of Baraka: Bodies and Territory | 104 5 Arm Leg Leg Arm Head: Five Percenter Theologies of Immanence | 119 Conclusion: The Seal of Muslim Pseudo | 144 Acknowledgments | 155 Notes | 157 Bibliography | 171 Index | 181

Read more less

Book Synopsis“There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion,” Deleuze and Guattari write in their final collaboration, What Is Philosophy? Their claim that Christianity “secretes” atheism “more than any other religion,” however, reflects the limits of their archive. Theological projects seeking to engage Deleuze remain embedded within Christian theologies and intellectual histories; whether they embrace, resist, or negotiate with Deleuze’s atheism, the atheism in question remains one extracted from Christian theology, a Christian atheism. In Sufi Deleuze, Michael Muhammad Knight offers an intervention, engaging Deleuzian questions and themes from within Islamic tradition. Even if Deleuze did not think of himself as a theologian, Knight argues, to place Deleuze in conversation with Islam is a project of comparative theology and faces the challenge of any comparative theology: It seemingly demands that complex, internally diverse traditions can speak as coherent, monolithic wholes. To start from such a place would not only defy Islam’s historical multiplicity but also betray Deleuze’s model of the assemblage, which requires attention to not only the organizing and stabilizing tendencies within a structure but also the points at which a structure resists organization, its internal heterogeneity, and unpredictable “lines of flight.” A Deleuzian approach to Islamic theology would first have to affirm that there is no such thing as a universal “Islamic theology” that can speak for all Muslims in all historical settings, but rather a multiplicity of power struggles between major and minor forces that contest each other over authenticity, authority, and the making of “orthodoxy.” The discussions in Sufi Deleuze thus highlight Islam’s extraordinary range of possibilities, not only making use of canonically privileged materials such as the Qur’an and major hadith collections, but also exploring a variety of marginalized resources found throughout Islam that challenge the notion of a singular “mainstream” interpretive tradition. To say it in Deleuze’s vocabulary, Islam is a rhizome.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Secrets and Secretions | 1 1 Deleuze and Tafsir: Th e Rhizomatic Qur’an | 25 2 People of the Sunna and the Assemblage: Deleuzian Hadith Theory | 61 3 Beyond Theology: Sufism as Arrangement and Affect | 84 4 The Immanence of Baraka: Bodies and Territory | 104 5 Arm Leg Leg Arm Head: Five Percenter Theologies of Immanence | 119 Conclusion: The Seal of Muslim Pseudo | 144 Acknowledgments | 155 Notes | 157 Bibliography | 171 Index | 181

Read more less

Book SynopsisCriticism of contemporary art is split by an opposition between activism and the critical function of form. Yet the deeper, more subterranean terms of art-judgment are largely neglected on both sides. These essays combine a re-examination of the terms of judgement of contemporary art with critical interpretations of individual works and exhibitions by Luis Camnitzer, Marcel Duchamp, Matias Faldbakken, Anne Imhof and Cady Noland. The book moves from philosophical issues, via the lingering shadows of medium-specificity (in photography and art music), and the changing states of museums, to analyses of the peculiar ways that works of art relate to time.To give artistic form to crisis, it is suggested, one needs to understand contemporary art's own constitutive crisis of form.Trade ReviewSpritely -- David Beer * The Critic *Praise for Anywhere or Not At All * : *An important achievement. This is the first book known to me that brings contemporary art as a whole to philosophical consideration. One of the orienting points for future work. -- John Rapko * Notre Dame, Philosophical Reviews *A brilliant book -- Blake Stimson * Philosophy of Photography *Osborne's capacity to synthesise the impact of new geopolitical realities on art practices make this book an important one not just for philosophers, art historians and critics, but new media theorists as well. -- Lisa Trhair * Critical Enquiry *An inestimably significant intervention into a range of debates in the history, theory, criticism, and philosophy of contemporary art and its various genealogies and lineages. For the range of thought-provoking and suggestive insights offered, it has few competitors in the field. -- James Lavender * Goodreads *Praise for The Postconceptual Condition * : *Compelling -- Max L. Feldman * Afterimage *Peter Osborne offers a fundamental reflection on the critical potential of art today, but also on its lacunas, an element that gives more value to the work. * Critique d’art *Very little philosophical writing is inspiring enough to catalyse art and bring it into being. Peter Osborne's writing is consistently in this category. -- Hito SteyerlIt is essential reading for anyone serious about contemporary art - or its philosophy. -- Ruth Noack, Curator of documeta 12

Read more less

Book SynopsisIntroducing Lévi-Strauss is a guide to the work of the great French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009). The book brilliantly traces the development and influence of Lévi-Strauss' thought, from his early work on the function of the incest taboo to initiate an exchange of women between groups, to his identification of a timeless "wild" or "primitive" mode of thinking - a pensée sauvage - behind the processes of human culture. Accessibly written by Boris Wiseman and beautifully illustrated by Judy Groves, Introducing Lévi-Strauss also explores the major contribution that Lévi-Strauss made to contemporary aesthetic history - his work on American-Indian mythology provides a key insight into the way in which art itself comes into being.This is an essential introduction to a key thinker.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe "structuralist" theories of power show that the subject is produced and reproduced by the investment of power: but how then can we think of the subject's resistance to power? Based on this fundamental question, Power and Resistance interprets critically the (post-)structuralist theory of power and resistance, i.e., the theories of Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, Derrida and Althusser. It analyses also the mechanism of power and the strategies of resistance in the era of neoliberalism. This meticulous analysis that completely renewed the theory of power is already published in French, Japanese, and Korean with success.Trade ReviewConceptually dense and philosophically masterful, Yoshiyuki Sato's Power and Resistance ranges widely across the work of Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, and Althusser (with Lacan as the 'silent partner' of the text), in pursuit of how the structuralist (non)dialectic of power and resistance comes to be underpinned by this aporetic subject that must be both the product of the social structure, yet also that which furnishes the force of resistance to its reproduction, demonstrating precisely that the "thought of the subject" is nothing other than a theory of how the 'outside' relates to the interiority of the structure. Refusing the now-widespread reception of post-68 French thought as having 'done away with' the category of the subject, Sato shows ably and with real mastery of the literature, why we must instead consider these thinkers to be precisely 'theoreticians of the subject'. In our current conceptual conjuncture, this important book has reemerged in English after its French and Japanese editions to provide the thought of a transformation beyond that dialectic of subjection and resistance which merely reinforces the social closure, giving proof positive for the politicality and living force of this set of figures so crucial to twentieth century thought. -- Gavin WalkerThe author is to be commended for his ability to pose problems clearly, for his very thorough and convincing argument, and for his enlightening and stimulating reading of the main authors he discusses, namely: Freud, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and finally Althusser. -- Jacques-Louis Lantoine * Acta fabula *Sato has taken on the impressive task of isolating, with analytical precision, the sources of resistance within generally conceived structuralist theory. His thesis offers a masterful and erudite reading of Foucault, Freud, Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida, and Althusser, among others. His explanation of a sample of texts by these authors is quite illuminating. Indeed, Sato succeeds in showing that the theory of the subject, if understood in its relation to a constitutive death drive, carries with it the possibility of resisting the cruelty of the law and providing the basis for a general theory of resistance. He further shows that structuralism should not be seen as a 'static' description of social and linguistic structures, and that what is needed is rather a diachronic view of structures that takes into account - without domesticating - the forces of contingency. Starting from the death drive and the contingency of structures, and through an argument that is as erudite as it is enlightening, Sato constructs an explanation of resistance in structuralism (but also for it and its future), thus reviving a debate that has unfortunately been bogged down for some time in clichés and misconceptions. -- Judith ButlerWith unusual clarity, Yoshiyuki Sato reconstructs the relations of appropriation, exclusion and interaction that allow us to speak of a structuralist moment defined by the conjunction of Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Althusser. He explores the encounters that took place around the notion of power and, with it, the forms of its internalization: the subject, subjection and subjectivity. Sato shows us the multiple dialogues that took place between these very different thinkers, not in spite of their divergent lexicons, but because of them, and how the questions surrounding power led to an examination of the concept of resistance and its functions in fields as diverse as physics, biology, psychoanalysis and politics. Sato's rigor, his refusal to blur the distinctions between the philosophers in question and his insistence on staying close to their actual texts, sets this study apart from the common interpretations of structuralism and the structuralist moment. It provides a new foundation for the study of French philosophy of the sixties and seventies. -- Warren MontagSato's book brilliantly testifies to the acuteness, depth and originality of the readings of French philosophy of the twentieth century which are carried out today by young foreign philosophers, especially Japanese. Through them is brought a new freshness, a re-perspective and re-questioning, and therefore these are the conditions for a relaunch of previously passionate debates which reaches us at the opportune moment. As a participant, along with some others, in these debates in which I - quite wrongly - believed to have travelled all avenues, it is with great pleasure that I welcome this critical return and this relaunch. -- Etienne Balibar

Read more less

Book SynopsisA secret history of philosophy grafting theory onto science, combining art and storytelling to bring Western thought back to its roots.Trade ReviewFrom the conversation of Socrates and Phaedrus in the shade of the plane tree to Irigaray's meditation on the water lily, The Philosopher's Plant takes us outside city walls, across gardens of letters and vegetables, grassy slopes and vineyards, to the dimly lit sources of philosophy's vitality. With distinctive depth and clarity, Marder reminds us that, far from walled in, the human community communes with nature and is itself inhabited by nature. -- Claudia Baracchi, Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca The Philosopher's Plant is an original contribution to a concept which for too long has been marginalized. As the only contemporary philosopher working on plants from a deconstructive and weak-thought perspective, Marder provides not only another contribution to the philosophical concept of plants in general, but also adds onto his own work. -- Santiago Zabala, ICREA/University of Barcelona The Philosopher's Plant is a genuine pleasure to read and one of the most innovative books I have encountered in some time. Marder's argument is that contemporary scientific research into how plants communicate, interact with, and possibly even perceive the environment should be enriched by an engagement with how the Western philosophical tradition has already thought and continues thinking the problem of plant life for human being-in-the-world. -- William Egginton, Johns Hopkins University The Philosopher's Plant is an alluring immersion in phytophilia, exploring the thought of philosophers from Plato to Irigaray by way of their intimate reflections on plant life. Not only do we learn much that is subtle and profound about plants but we come to see the work of these thinkers in refreshing new lights. Humor and wit alternate with penetrating philosophical insight in this bouquet of delights. -- Edward S. Casey, SUNY at Stony Brook, author of The World at a Glance and The World on Edge One must give Michael Marder credit for combining the deconstruction of our traditional metaphysics with a focus on the plant world. He invites us to perceive and consider again the presence and the potential of our living environment, the thoughtless use of which has damaged both our life and our culture. -- Luce Irigaray All who get a taste of this succulent study will find much food for thought. Library Journal (starred review) [The Philosopher's Plant] provides provocative insight into the significance of plant life in the evolution of philosophical thought... Recommended. ChoiceTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue: Herbarium Philosophicum Part I: Ancient Plant-Souls 1. Plato's Plane Tree 2. Aristotle's Wheat 3. Plotinus' Anonymous "Great Plant" Part II. Medieval Plant-Instruments 4. Augustine's Pears 5. Avicenna's Celery 6. Maimonides' Palm Tree Part III. Modern Plant-Images 7. Leibniz's Blades of Grass 8. Kant's Tulip 9. Hegel's Grapes Part IV: Postmodern Plant-Subjects 10. Heidegger's Apple Tree 11. Derrida's Sunflowers 12. Irigaray's Water Lily Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisSentimental Empiricism reconsiders the legacy of eighteenth and nineteenth century empiricism and moral sentimentalism for the intellectual formation of the generation of postwar French thinkers whose work came to dominate Anglophone conversations across the humanities under the guise of French theory. Panagia's book first shows what was missed in the reception of this literature in the Anglophone academy by attending to how France's pedagogical milieu plays out church and state relations in the form of educational debates around reading practices, the aesthetics of mimesis, French imperialism, and republican universalism. Panagia then shows how such thinkers as Jean Wahl, Simone de Beauvoir, Gilbert Simondon, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault develop a sentimental empiricist critical philosophy that distances itself from dialectical critique and challenges the metaphysical premise of inherent relations, especially as it had been articulated in the tradition of Aristotelian

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA bold defense of a neglected concept and its relevance for critical social theory.Trade ReviewThrough a compelling combination of acute analysis and rich phenomenological description, Rahel Jaeggi brings alienation back to the center of political philosophy. She argues alienation concerns a failure to appropriate oneself in the right way, a problem with how one comes to be what one is, rather than an inability to realize some pregiven identity. Jaeggi is not only thoroughly learned in both the continental and analytic traditions. She does what is quite rare: she brings these traditions into a highly productive synthesis. A very impressive achievement. -- Daniel Brudney, University of Chicago With this masterful reconstruction of the concept of alienation, Jaeggi opens fruitful new avenues for critical theory. She also claims her place as a powerful exponent of social philosophy and a thinker of the first rank. Her book is a tour de force of cogent argumentation and rich phenomenological description. -- Nancy Fraser, The New School Alienation, the concept Hegel and Marx made so central to European political and social thought, has receded in importance in recent political philosophy. Like self-deception and weakness of will, it is extremely resistant to analysis even though it continues to be a major theme of modern life and accounts for the features of contemporary life. Jaeggi's great accomplishment is to provide the outlines of a new theory of an old term and thereby show its linkage to major ethical and political concerns. With this book, an entire tradition of political and social philosophy receives a new lease on life. -- Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University Jaeggi's scholarship and writing in this book is excellent, and the resuscitation of the concept of alienation in critical social theory is a welcome event in the literature. -- Matthias Fritsch, Concordia University Alienation is one of the most exciting books to have appeared on the German philosophical scene in the last decade. It not only rejuvenates a lagging discourse on the topic of alienation; it also shows how an account of subjectivity elaborated two centuries ago can be employed in the service of new philosophical insights. -- Frederick Neuhouser, Barnard College This insightful and learned book will appeal to anyone interested in social philosophy. Library Journal Rahel Jaeggi's Alienation is an important contribution to - and rejuvenation of - the philosophical literature on the phenomenon of alienation. Marx & Philosophy Review of Books [A]n excellent representative of the work of a new generation of German philosophers who...seem well positioned to reanimate Western philosophy. -- Frederick Neuhouser Review of MetaphysicsTable of ContentsForeword, by Axel Honneth Translator's Introduction, by Frederick Neuhouser Preface and Acknowledgments Part 1. The Relation of Relationlessness: Reconstructing a Concept of Social Philosophy 1. "A Stranger in the World That He Himself Has Made": The Concept and Phenomenon of Alienation 2. Marx and Heidegger: Two Versions of Alienation Critique 3. The Structure and Problems of Alienation Critique 4. Having Oneself at One's Command: Reconstructing the Concept of Alienation Part 2. Living One's Life as an Alien Life: Four Cases 5. Seinesgleichen Geschieht or "The Like of It Now Happens": The Feeling of Powerlessness and the Independent Existence of One's Own Actions 6. "A Pale, Incomplete, Strange, Artificial Man": Social Roles and the Loss of Authenticity 7. "She but Not Herself": Self-Alienation as Internal Division 8. "As If Through a Wall of Glass": Indifference and Self-Alienation Part 3. Alienation as a Disturbed Appropriation of Self and World 9. "Like a Structure of Cotton Candy": Being Oneself as Self-Appropriation 10. "Living One's Own Life": Self-Determination, Self-Realization, and Authenticity Conclusion: The Sociality of the Self, the Sociality of Freedom Notes Works Cited Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis long-overdue volume explores Donna Haraway's influence on feminist theory and philosophy, paying particular attention to her more recent work on companion species, rather than her “Manifesto for Cyborgs.”Trade Review...an invaluable tool for student's wishing to further explore Haraway's work. Critical TheoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Adventures with Haraway 2. Natures 3. Knowledges 4. Politics 5. Ethics 6. Stories Sowing Worlds: A Seed Bag for Terraforming with Earth Others Appendix: Some Bibliometric Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOne of the most gripping and timely accounts of Continental Philosophy... The reader can only come to the end of this book astonished. -- Catherine Keller Modern Theology In all, the book offers a new understanding of an influential sector of twentieth-century philosophy. -- Jonathan Malesic Journal of the American Academy of Religion ...passionately argued and engagingly written. -- Paul A. Macdonald Jr. Scottish Journal of Theology a fun read. -- George Pattison Reviews in Religion and TheologyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Wonder and the Births of Philosophy 1. Repetition: Martin Heidegger 2. Openness: Emmanuel Levinas 3. Relation: Jean-Luc Nancy 4. Decision: Jacques Derrida Postlude: Possibility Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Everything is in flux, as we are told over and over again. And yet, these are fluxes in which nothing ever really changes... Other thinkers have characterized globalized and financialized capitalism in this way; Neyrat sees it as a dilemma for critical thought as well... In a world where anything can be anyplace, and anything can switch places with anything else, philosophy must insist on its power to be, not everyplace, but noplace. It must never fit in, but always disturb its context, ... maintaining a relation with the very Outside that our dominant social, economic, and intellectual conditions seek to deny or suppress... Above all, Atopias is a work of ethics, exhorting us to recognize and find room for the many forms of existence with whom we share our planet." -- -from Steven Shaviro's ForewordTable of ContentsCritique of pure madness Book I: Toposophy 1.1 The undamaged and the contagious 1.2 Saturated immanence and transcendence x 1.3 Socratic divergence Book II: Theory of the trans-ject 2.1 Being-outside 2.2 Coalitions 2.3 Ab-solved freedom 2.4 Language and dis-joining 2.5 On the subject of animals Book III: The metaphysical proposition 3.1 The transgression of the principle of the excluded middle 3.2 The leap and the loop 3.3 The unlocatable 3.4 The madwoman of the out-of-place 3.5 Science(s), art, politics What cries out

Read more less

Book SynopsisThomas Nail traces an alternative history of ancient and modern thinkers from the Bronze Age to quantum physics who share a radically different understanding of the nature of matter and motion compared to the rest of the Euro-Western tradition.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this book Jacques Rancière radicalises his critique of modernism and its postmodern appendix. He contrasts their unilinear and exclusive time with the interweaving of temporalities at play in modern processes of emancipation and artistic revolutions, showing how this plurality itself refers to the double dimension of time. Time is more than a line drawn from the past to the future. It is a form of life, marked by the ancient hierarchy between those who have time and those who do not. This hierarchy, continued in the Marxist notion of the vanguard and nakedly exhibited in Clement Greenberg's modernism, still governs a present which clings to the fable of historical necessity and its experts. In opposition to this, Rancière shows how the break with the hierarchical conception of time, formulated by Emerson in his vision of the new poet, implies a completely different idea of the modern. He sees the fulfilment of this in the two arts of movement, cinema and dance, which at the beginning of the twentieth century abolished the opposition between free and mechanical people, at the price of exposing the rift between the revolution of artists and that of strategists.Trade ReviewOne of our most stimulating thinkers * Paris Match *Ranciere's writings offer one of the few conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist. -- Slavoj ZizekIt's clear that Jacques Rancière is relighting the flame that was extinguished for many-that is why he serves as such a signal reference today. -- Thomas HirschhornHis art lies in the rigor of his argument-its careful, precise unfolding -and at the same time not treating his reader, whether university professor or unemployed actress, as an imbecile. -- Kristin RossFrench philosopher Jacques Ranciere is a refreshing read for anyone concerned with what art has to do with politics and society. * Art Review *

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhy is postmodernist discourse so biased against the Enlightenment? Indeed, postmodern theory challenges the validity of the rational basis of modern historical scholarship and the Enlightenment itself. Rather than avoiding this conflict, the contributors to this vibrant collection return to the philosophical roots of the Enlightenment, and do not hesitate to look at them through a postmodernist lens, engaging issues like anti-Semitism, Utopianism, colonial legal codes, and ideas of authorship. Dismissing the notion that the two camps are ideologically opposed and thus incompatible, these essays demonstrate an exciting new scholarship that confidently mixes the empiricism of Enlightenment thought with a strong postmodernist skepticism, painting a subtler and richer historical canvas.Trade Review"This superb collection not only provides original and important perspectives on many aspects of eighteenth century thought; it also insists, passionately and provocatively, that the Enlightenment could speak to the drama and frustrations of the human condition more cogently than the philosophy of our own day. The contributors engage lucidly and critically with postmodernism, making keen use of its important insights, but sternly deflating the widespread misconceptins it has engendered about its intellectual predecessors. Few readers will agree with everything said here. But all readers will find something to make them stop, and ponder, and reflect." -- David A.Bell,Professor ofHistory, John Hopkins University"This much-needed collection of essays explodes postmodernism's ignorant prejudices about the Enlightenment and restores that great intellectual movement to its proper place as the source of the modern Enlightenment fashion, the essays are vigorously argued and lucidly written. An Outstanding book." -- PaulRobinson, Professor of History, Stanford UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction, Daniel Gordon; Chapter 1 Montesquieu in the Caribbean, Malick W. Ghachem; Chapter 2 Man in the Mirror, Arthur Goldhammer; Chapter 3 An Eighteenth-Century Time Machine, Daniel Rosenberg; Chapter 4 Virtuous Economies, Elena Russo; Chapter 5 Rationalizing the Enlightenment, Ronald Schechter; Chapter 6 Writing the History of Censorship in the Age of Enlightenment, Sophia Rosenfeld; Chapter 7 Reproducing Utopia, Alessa Johns; Chapter 8 The Pre-Postmodernism of Carl Becker, Johnson Kent Wright; Chapter 9 Foucault, Nietzsche, Enlightenment, Louis Miller; Chapter 10 On the Supposed Obsolescence of the French Enlightenment, Daniel Gordon;

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisBuilding a foundational understanding of the digital, Logic of the Digital reveals a unique digital ontology. Beginning from formal and technical characteristics, especially the binary code at the core of all digital technologies, Aden Evens traces the pathways along which the digital domain of abstract logic encounters the material, human world. How does a code using only 0s and 1s give rise to the vast range of applications and information that constitutes a great and growing portion of our world?Evens' analysis shows how any encounter between the actual and the digital must cross an ontological divide, a gap between the productive materiality of the human world and the reductive abstraction of the binary code. Logic of the Digital examines the distortions of this ontological crossing, considering the formal abstraction that persists in exemplary digital technologies and techniques such as the mouse, the Web, the graphical user interface, and the development of softTrade ReviewIn pointing a finger at the digital, Aden Evens is neither skeptical nor enthusiastic, but offers a careful tracking of the logic described in his title. Careful in the meticulous and informed argument, written in lucid and downright enjoyable prose; but also careful in how far to lament or grieve future outcomes, and here Evens is reasoned and balanced in weighing the potentials of the digital; and finally, care in assessing the burden or weight of the digital on us - how much care we need to take. In this, Evens pulls off the feat of arguing the digital is defined by its abstraction and showing this abstraction in the most pragmatic and everyday ways possible. We feel the digital’s weight in all we do today, and Evens' book is a wise and necessary guide. -- Sandy Baldwin, Professor of English, Rochester Institute of Technology, USAEvens (Dartmouth College) argues that something is lost in our interactions with digital technologies. Clearly, much is changed, but is the loss more than the gain? Evens … develops the argument … as a critique of abstraction, an etymological deconstruction of language used to talk about abstraction, and prescriptive critical analyses of Smalltalk, the user interface, and the World Wide Web. … It may well be that digital objects have a more austere logic than physical objects, but this makes it even more important to understand how they have nevertheless transformed human activity and experience so rapidly and thoroughly. Useful for graduate students, primarily to provoke critical discussions about digital technology. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. From Bits to the Object 2. From Objects to the Interface 3. On the Interface - Input - Mediation - Output 4. From the Interface to the Web 5. Abstraction and Its Consequences Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisSean Gaston is Reader in English at Brunel University, UK. Ian Maclachlan is University Lecturer in French and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, UK.Trade Review'A star-studded cast of commentators here offer their takes on Derrida's most famous work, clarifying its many difficulties and exploring its multifarious implications. A most valuable book.' -- Jonathan Culler, Professor of English, Cornell University, USARather than carve the Grammatology up into themes or sections imposed from without, the editors have divided their collection according to the letter of the divisions of Derrida's book. This offers practical advantages to the reader who may be searching for discusion of one particular passage...Some [contributions] are usefully orientated towards filling in the background context of a certain passage, where others are concerned to unpack the conceptual content of Derrida's technical vocabulary. A valuable few reach across large portions of the work, synthesising context, content, and structure...the strongest element of this book id that so may admirable readers of Derrida are gathered here together...Many of the entries here could serve as springboards for articles and research projects...Reading Derrida's Of Grammatology does succeed admirably in underscoring the overflowing brilliance of Derrida's book. -- Andrew Dunstall * Radical Philosophy Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Punctuations Sean Gaston; Translator's Preface: Reading De la grammatologie Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; PART I: WRITING BEFORE THE LETTER; 1. The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing; i. Epoch, Event, Context Christopher Johnson; ii. Origins: "the most original and powerful ethnocentrism" Michael Syrotinski; iii. Even Leibniz Sean Gaston; iv. The Cybernetic Imaginary Christopher Johnson; v. Deconstruction - A Little Note Forbes Morlock; vi. From Etymology ("etumos logos") to Translation, via Badiou and Paulhan Michael Syrotinski; vii. Of Dark Sentences and Gnomes Julian Wolfreys; viii. Pneumatology, Pneuma, Souffle, Breath Michael Naas; ix. Good Writing Sarah Wood; x. A Certain Way of Inhabiting Peggy Kamuf; xi. The Idea of the Book Ian Maclachlan; xii. Forbes Morlock; 2. Linguistics and Grammatology; i. Exergue J. Hillis Miller; ii. Brisure J. Hillis Miller; iii. Jeu J. Hillis Miller; iv. Trace J. Hillis Miller; v. Bizarre Nicholas Royle; vi. Arbitrary Derek Attridge; vii. Writing and World Sean Gaston; viii. This Concept Destroys its Name Ann Smock; ix. Embarrassing Experience Ian Maclachlan; x. A Hinge Ian Maclachlan; xi. Something Other Than Finitude Ian Maclachlan; xii. L'overture blanche Jean-Luc Nancy; 3. Of Grammatology as a Positive Science; i. Grammatology as a "Positive" Science Christopher Johnson; ii. Writing In Evolution, Evolution As "Writing" Christopher Johnson; iii. Grammatology as General Science Peggy Kamuf; iv. Why Leibniz Paul Davies; v. Difference - A Little Note Forbes Morlock; vi. The Constitution of Good and Bad Objects Sarah Wood; PART II: WRITING, NATURE, CULTURE; 1. The Violence of the Letter: From Levi-Strauss to Rousseau; i. Leurre, Lure, Delusion, Illusion Michael Naas; ii. The Subject of Reading - 1 Forbes Morlock; 2. "... That Dangerous Supplement..."; i. Entamer, Entame, To Initiate or Open Up, to Breach or Broach Michael Naas; ii. The Subject of Reading - 2 Forbes Morlock; iii. The Subject of Reading - 3 Forbes Morlock; iv. L'habitation des femmes Peggy Kamuf; 3. Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the Origin of Languages; 3.1 The Place of the "Essay"; i. Pity, Virtuality and Power Sean Gaston; ii. Being-in Nature Peggy Kamuf; iii. Preference and Force Clare Connors; iv. Dynamis and Energia Clare Connors; 3.2 Imitation; i. Fractal Geography Geoffrey Bennington; ii. Estampe Ann Smock; iii. Accents Ann Smock; iv. The Copyist Forbes Morlock; v. Articulation, Accent and Rhyme Clare Connors; 3.3 Ariticulation; i. Butades, the Invention of Drawing and "immediate sign" Michael Naas; ii. The Eye at the Centre of Language Peggy Kamuf; iii. Climate and Catastrophe: A Lost Opening? Timothy Clark; iv. The Subject of Reading - 4 Forbes Morlock; v. The Subject of Reading - 5 Forbes Morlock; vi. The Point d'Eau or the Water-Holes that are Imperceptibly Present in Writing Sarah Wood; vii. Rhythm Clare Connors; viii. Presque Clare Connors; 4. From/Of the Supplement to the Source: The Theory of Writing; i. The Subject of Reading - 6 Forbes Morlock; ii. Theatre Without Theatre Ann Smock; iii. On Naivete Peggy Kamuf; iv. Kafka, Literature and Metaphor Sean Gaston; v. Periodicity Sean Gaston; vi. Habitation in General Peggy Kamuf; vii. "From somewhere where we are" Peggy Kamuf; Biographical Notes: Intervals; Bibliography; Index.

Read more less