Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines how the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, a speculative philosopher from the first half of the twentieth century, converses and entangles itself with continental philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries around the question of a sustainable civilization in the present. Chapters are focused around economic and environmental sustainability, questions of how technology and systems relate to this sustainability, relationships between human and nonhuman entities, relationships among humans, and how larger philosophical questions lead one to think differently about what the terms sustainable and civilization mean. The book aims to uncover and explore ways in which the combination of these philosophies might provide the dislocations within thought that lead to novel ways of being and acting in the world.
Trade ReviewThe philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1949) was marginalized for much of the later twentieth century, but it has achieved a new prominence in the twenty-first. The essays in this volume consider how Whitehead's thought resonates, in a variety of ways, with the concerns of recent continental philosophy. The authors here draw on Whitehead to consider matters all the way from the urgent need for humanitarian action to refined speculations on the nature of time. -- Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University
Guided by top scholars and thinkers, readers of this collection join a robust, multidisciplinary, and practical conversation that applies Whitehead's thought to the social and environmental realities of our time. Whitehead's work, often relegated to the realm of metaphysics, emerges as a bold and sensitive resource for action. Most importantly, the authors focus on the concrete -- real people, real crises, real movements — providing both examples and reflection on how philosophy must engage, engage, engage. -- Donna Bowman, University of Central Arkansas
If Whiteheadian cosmology matters to this wayward century, what better way to intensify its materializations than the conversation staged in this book? Bringing process cosmology into engagement at once with Continental philosophy and with present ecopolitical crisis, this assemblage of essays delivers its edgy contrasts with stunning communicative force. -- Catherine Keller, Drew University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Jeremy Fackenthal
Part 1: Technological and Systematic Dislocations
Chapter 1. Creativity and Adversity
William Hammrick
Chapter 2. Interrogating the Quantified Self: The Technological Reinterpretation of Causal Efficacy
Bo Eberle
Chapter 3. Nerfed: Complex Systems and Whiteheadian Social Activism
J. R. Hustwit and Carl Dyke
Part 2: Human/Nonhuman Dislocations
Chapter 4. Process Philosophy and Neo-Materialism: Nomadic Subjectivity and Evanescing toward Sustainability
Jeremy Fackenthal
Chapter 5. Syrian Life on the Edge: Engaging an Ontology of Immanence
Deena M. Lin
Chapter 6. Conceptual Prehensions and Worlds of Experience: Whitehead and Uexküll on the Nonhuman Subject
Tano Posteraro
Part 3: Time, the World, and Abstraction
Chapter 7. Philosophy against Abstraction: Whitehead and Deleuze
Kris Klotz
Chapter 8. Power in Relation: Foucault, Whitehead, Deleuze
Elijah Prewitt-Davis
Chapter 9. Taking Aim at the Present: Whitehead, Continental Philosophy and the Bifurcation of Nature
Keith Robinson
