Search results for ""Author James Williams""

James Williams sets out a new process philosophy of signs where signs are processes, not fixed relations. He develops his argument through a formal model and a series of case studies in art, science, technology, politics and nature. He engages in dialogue with the philosophies of Deleuze and Whitehead, and in critical discussion with contemporary and historical theories of the sign.

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Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access.

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Against the unjust legacies of the traditional sublime, James Williams defends an anarchist sublime: multiple, self-destructive and temporary; opposed to any idea of highest value to be shared by all, but always imposed on the powerless.

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This book offers the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source for his vital philosophy of the event. Deleuze's philosophy has always promised a revolution in ethical theories and in our understanding of the relation between language, thought and action. This book develops a critical reading of Deleuze's work in order to convey the potential and risks of his new approaches to questions of how to live an intense life in response to the excitement and danger of events. This interpretation covers all aspects of Deleuze's book, including engagements with phenomenology, with analytic philosophy of language, with stoicism, with literary theory and with psychoanalysis. Its aim is to open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics and sociology.

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Author Under Sail offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer. Jay Williams examines the authorial imagination in London’s work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a three-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London’s “Story of a Typhoon” to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on theatricality and the representation of the seen and the unseen.Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.

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In Author Under Sail: The Imagination of Jack London, 1902–1907, Jay Williams explores Jack London’s necessity to illustrate the inner workings of his vast imagination. In this second installment of a three-volume biography, Williams captures the life of a great writer expressed though his many creative works, such as The Call of the Wild and White Fang, as well as his first autobiographical memoir, The Road, some of his most significant contributions to the socialist cause, and notable uncompleted works. During this time, London became one of the most famous authors in America, perhaps even the author with the highest earnings, as he prepared to become an equally famous international writer.Author Under Sail documents London’s life in both a biographical and writerly fashion, depicting the importance of his writing experiences as his career followed a trajectory similar to America’s from 1876 to 1916. The underground forces of London’s narratives were shaped by a changing capitalist society, media outlets, racial issues, increases in women’s rights, and advancements in national power. Williams factors in these elements while exploring London’s deeply conflicted relationship with his own authorial inner life. In London’s work, the imagination is figured as a ghost or as a ghostlike presence, and the author’s personas, who form a dense population among his characters, are portrayed as haunted or troubled in some way. Along with examining the functions and works of London’s exhaustive imagination, Williams takes a critical look at London’s ability to tell his stories to wide arrays of audiences, stitching incidents together into coherent wholes so they became part of a raconteur’s repertoire. Author Under Sail provides a multidimensional examination of the life of a crucial American storyteller and essayist.

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This book offers the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source for his vital philosophy of the event. Deleuze's philosophy has always promised a revolution in ethical theories and in our understanding of the relation between language, thought and action. This book develops a critical reading of Deleuze's work in order to convey the potential and risks of his new approaches to questions of how to live an intense life in response to the excitement and danger of events. This interpretation covers all aspects of Deleuze's book, including engagements with phenomenology, with analytic philosophy of language, with stoicism, with literary theory and with psychoanalysis. Its aim is to open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics and sociology.

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This is a revised, expanded and fully up-to-date critical introduction to Deleuze's most important work of philosophy. This is the first critical introduction to "Difference and Repetition" (first published in 1968): Gilles Deleuze's most important work of philosophy and one of the most significant texts of contemporary philosophy. By critically analysing of Deleuze's methods, principles and arguments, James Williams helps readers to engage with the revolutionary core of Deleuze's philosophy and take up positions for or against its most innovative and controversial ideas. The book will also help to extend Deleuze's work to philosophers working in the analytic tradition. New for this edition: significant new material on intensity, Deleuze and science and questions of action after Difference and Repetition, all of which feed into current debates about how Deleuzian philosophy relates to politics and ethics; guides students through the key debates and oppositions by engaging with latest interpretations of Deleuze by Levi Bryant, Anna Sauvagnargues, Daniel W. Smith, Henry Somers-Hall and Miguel de Beistegui; and, a final critical section introduces and gives brief descriptions of new works on Deleuze, contrasting the Williams reading with others.

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Author Under Sail offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer. Jay Williams examines the authorial imagination in London’s work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a three-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London’s “Story of a Typhoon” to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on theatricality and the representation of the seen and the unseen.Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.

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Edward Lear wrote a well-known autobiographical poem that begins ‘How pleasant to know Mr Lear!’ But how well do we really know him? On the one hand he is, in John Ashbery’s words, ‘one of the most popular poets who ever lived’; on the other hand he has often been overlooked or marginalized by scholars and in literary histories. James Williams’s account, the first book-length critical study of the poet since the 1980s, sets out to re-introduce Lear and to accord him his proper place: as a major Victorian figure of continuing appeal and relevance, and especially as a poet of beauty, comedy, and profound ingenuity. Williams approaches Lear’s work thematically, tracing some of its most fundamental subjects and situations. Grounded in attentive close readings, Williams also connects Lear’s nonsense with his various other creative endeavours: as a zoological illustrator and landscape painter, a travel writer, and a prolific diarist and correspondent.

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Presented as a set of three copies each of the original 20 cards inside a giftable hardcover box, these bold, colorful postcards preserve a major early design statement of the BauhausIn 1923, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius commissioned 20 postcards from artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky to use as promotional flyers for the school's first exhibition. Issued here for the first time in their original format, these rare and priceless postcards perfectly express the spirit of the early Bauhaus.Featuring artwork digitized using state-of-the-art capture technology, and printed stochastically at 100 percent of the original size, with space on the back for messages, each postcard is a miniature piece of art. From the expressionism of Klee and Kandinsky to the modernism of Herbert Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Postcards allows readers to send (or keep!) a precious piece of design history.Artists include: Rudolf Bascha

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This book brings back into print, for the first time since the 1830s, a text that was central to the transatlantic campaign to fully abolish slavery in Britain’s colonies. James Williams, an eighteen-year-old Jamaican “apprentice” (former slave), came to Britain in 1837 at the instigation of the abolitionist Joseph Sturge. The Narrative he produced there, one of very few autobiographical texts by Caribbean slaves or former slaves, became one of the most powerful abolitionist tools for effecting the immediate end to the system of apprenticeship that had replaced slavery.Describing the hard working conditions on plantations and the harsh treatment of apprentices unjustly incarcerated, Williams argues that apprenticeship actually worsened the conditions of Jamaican ex-slaves: former owners, no longer legally permitted to directly punish their workers, used the Jamaican legal system as a punitive lever against them. Williams’s story documents the collaboration of local magistrates in this practice, wherein apprentices were routinely jailed and beaten for both real and imaginary infractions of the apprenticeship regulations. In addition to the complete text of Williams’s original Narrative, this fully annotated edition includes nineteenth-century responses to the controversy from the British and Jamaican press, as well as extensive testimony from the Commission of Enquiry that heard evidence regarding the Narrative’s claims. These fascinating and revealing documents constitute the largest extant body of direct testimony by Caribbean slaves or apprentices.

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Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting. The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time.

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Provides a wide-ranging account of the different disciplinary, critical and theoretical contexts relevant to the study of nonsense.

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A collaborative close reading of 'A Thousand Plateaus' by some of the world's leading Deleuze and Guattari scholarsThis volume brings together a team of international specialists on Deleuze and Guattari to provide in-depth critical studies of each plateau of their major work, 'A Thousand Plateaus'. It combines an overview of the text with deep scholarship and brings a renewed focus on the philosophical significance of their project.'A Thousand Plateaus' represents a whole new way of doing philosophy. This collection supports the critical reception of Deleuze and Guattari's text as one of the most important and influential works of modern theory.Key FeaturesEmphasises the philosophical nature of 'A Thousand Plateaus'Provides detailed coverage of the text as a whole Brings together cutting edge research from some of the leading lights in scholarship on Deleuze and GuattariAn ideal companion to a plateau-by-plateau reading of Deleuze and Guattari's workContributorsMiguel de Beistegui, University of Warwick, UKJeffrey A. Bell, Southeastern Louisiana University, USARonald Bogue, University of Georgia, USARay Brassier, American University of Beirut, LebanonEugene W. Holland, Ohio State University, USAEmma Ingala, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ItalySimon O'Sullivan, Goldsmiths, University of London, UKHelen Palmer, Kingston University London, UKPaul Patton, University of New South Wales, AustraliaJohn Protevi, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USADaniel W. Smith, Purdue University, USAHenry Somers-Hall, Royal Holloway, University of London, UKAudrey Wasser, Miami University, USANathan Widder, Royal Holloway, University of London, UKJames Williams, Deakin University, Australia

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The first comprehensive anthology of Jean-Francois Lyotard's writings together with a critical guide. The Lyotard Reader and Guide is designed as a one-stop companion to his thought. It covers the full range of Lyotard's work, from beginning to end, through his three main books (Discours, figure, Libidinal Economy and The Differend) and up to his influential essays in The Inhuman and Postmodern Fables. The readings are organised in sections on philosophy, politics, art and literature for ease of use. Detailed introductions to each section explain Lyotard's key ideas and raise criticisms, providing a clear critical introduction to Lyotard and his works. As a sourcebook and guide the book will be indispensable for the subjects touched by Lyotard's ground-breaking conceptual innovations and ideas, notably, philosophy, critical theory, literature, art and politics. Key features *The most up-to-date and comprehensive volume available *Includes the most important as well as less well known texts and newly translated work *Carefully selected and presented by leading Lyotard scholars *Broad coverage in sections covering Philosophy, Literature, Politics and Art *Full explanatory introductions to each section as well as a General Introduction provide a critical guide to Lyotard's work

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Despite the fact that time, evolution, becoming and genealogy are central concepts in Deleuze's work there has been no sustained study of his philosophy in relation to the question of history. This book aims to open up Deleuze's relevance to those working in history, the history of ideas, science studies, evolutionary psychology, history of philosophy and interdisciplinary projects inflected by historical problems. The essays in this volume (all by internationally recognised Deleuze scholars) cover all aspects of Deleuze's philosophy and its relation to history, ranging from the application of Deleuze's philosophy to historical method, Deleuze's own use of the history of philosophy, his interpretations of other historical thinkers (such as Hume and Nietzsche) and the complex theories of time and evolution in his work. Contributors include: Paul Patton, Manuel DeLanda, John Protevi, Ian Buchanan, Tim Flanagan, James Williams, Eve Bischoff, Jay Lampert.

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The first comprehensive anthology of Jean-Francois Lyotard's writings together with a critical guide. The Lyotard Reader and Guide is designed as a one-stop companion to his thought. It covers the full range of Lyotard's work, from beginning to end, through his three main books (Discours, figure, Libidinal Economy and The Differend) and up to his influential essays in The Inhuman and Postmodern Fables. The readings are organised in sections on philosophy, politics, art and literature for ease of use. Detailed introductions to each section explain Lyotard's key ideas and raise criticisms, providing a clear critical introduction to Lyotard and his works. As a sourcebook and guide the book will be indispensable for the subjects touched by Lyotard's ground-breaking conceptual innovations and ideas, notably, philosophy, critical theory, literature, art and politics. Key features *The most up-to-date and comprehensive volume available *Includes the most important as well as less well known texts and newly translated work *Carefully selected and presented by leading Lyotard scholars *Broad coverage in sections covering Philosophy, Literature, Politics and Art *Full explanatory introductions to each section as well as a General Introduction provide a critical guide to Lyotard's work

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