The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this (...) situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment. (shrink)

An analysis of how capitalism today produces subjectivity like any other “good,” and what would allow us to escape its hold. “Capital is a semiotic operator”: this assertion by Félix Guattari is at the heart of Maurizio Lazzarato's Signs and Machines, which asks us to leave behind the logocentrism that still informs so many critical theories. Lazzarato calls instead for a new theory capable of explaining how signs function in the economy, in power apparatuses, and in the production of subjectivity. (...) Moving beyond the dualism of signifier and signified, Signs and Machines shows how signs act as “sign-operators” that enter directly into material flows and into the functioning of machines. Money, the stock market, price differentials, algorithms, and scientific equations and formulas constitute semiotic “motors” that make capitalism's social and technical machines run, bypassing representation and consciousness to produce social subjections and semiotic enslavements. Lazzarato contrasts Deleuze and Guattari's complex semiotics with the political theories of Jacques Rancière, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, and Judith Butler, for whom language and the public space it opens still play a fundamental role. Lazzarato asks: What are the conditions necessary for political and existential rupture at a time when the production of subjectivity represents the primary and perhaps most important work of capitalism? What are the specific tools required to undo the industrial mass production of subjectivity undertaken by business and the state? What types of organization must we construct for a process of subjectivation that would allow us to escape the hold of social subjection and machinic enslavement? In addressing these questions, Signs and Machines takes on a task that is today more urgent than ever. (shrink)

The work of Gilles Deleuze has had an impact far beyond philosophy. He is among Foucault and Derrida as one of the most cited of all contemporary French thinkers. Never a student 'of' philosophy, Deleuze was always philosophical and many influential poststructuralist and postmodernist texts can be traced to his celebrated resurrection of Nietzsche against Hegel in his Nietzsche and Philosophy , from which this collection draws its title. This searching new collection considers Deleuze's relation to the philosophical tradition and (...) beyond to the future of philosophy, science and technology. In addition to considering Deleuze's imaginative readings of classic figures such as Spinoza and Kant, the essays also point to the meaning of Deleuze on 'monstrous' and machinic thinking, on philosophy and engineering, on philosophy and biology, on modern painting and literature. Deleuze and Philosophy continues the spirit of experimentation and invention that features in Deleuze's work and will appeal to those studying across philosophy, social theory, literature and cultural studies who themselves are seeking new paradigms of thought. (shrink)

The mathematical theory of communication.

At the beginning of Western philosophy, Aristotle contrasted made objects, which did not have the source of their own production within themselves, with beings formed by nature. This distinction persisted until Marx, who conceived of the possibility of an evolution of the technical object. This philosophy developed while industrialisation was in the process of overthrowing the contemporary order of social organisation, which highlighted technology's new place in philosophical enquiry. Bernard Stiegler goes back to the beginning of Western philosophy and revises (...) the Aristotelian assessment, developing a complex argument whereby the technical object can be seen as having an essential, distinctive temporality and dynamic of its own. The author engages the ideas of Rousseau, Husserl, and Heidegger, the paleo-ontologist Leroi-Gourhan, the anthropologists Vernant and Detienne, the sociologists Weber and Habermas, and the systems analysts Maturana and Varela. (shrink)

This article examines Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the simulacrum, which Deleuze formulated in the context of his reading of Nietzsche’s project of “overturning Platonism.” The essential Platonic distinction, Deleuze argues, is more profound than the speculative distinction between model and copy, original and image. The deeper, practical distinction moves between two kinds of images or eidolon, for which the Platonic Idea is meant to provide a concrete criterion of selection “Copies” or icons (eikones) are well-grounded claimants to the transcendent Idea, (...) authenticated by their internal resemblance to the Idea, whereas “simulacra” (phantasmata) are like false claimants, built on a dissimilarity and implying an essential perversion or deviation from the Idea. If the goal of Platonism is the triumph of icons over simulacra, the inversion of Platonism would entail an affirmation of the simulacrum as such, which must thus be given its own concept. Deleuze consequently defines the simulacrum in terms of an internal dissimilitude or “disparateness,” which in turn implies a new conception of Ideas, no longer as self-identical qualities (the auto kath’hauto), but rather as constituting a pure concept of difference. An inverted Platonism would necessarily be based on a purely immanent and differential conception of Ideas. Starting from this new conception of the Idea, Deleuze proposes to take up the Platonic project anew, rethinking the fundamental figures of Platonism (selection, repetition, ungrounding, the question-problem complex) on a purely differential basis. In this sense, Deleuze’s inverted Platonism can at the same time be seen as a rejuvenated Platonism and even a completed Platonism. (shrink)

One of the most innovative and brilliant philosophers of his generation, but largely neglected until he was brought to public attention by Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon presents a challenge to nearly every category and method of traditional philosophy. Psychic and Collective Individuation is undoubtedly Simondon's most important work and its influence, clearly felt in Stiegler and DeLanda, has continued to grow. David Scott provides the first full introduction to this work, which will inspire as well as instruct philosophers working in (...) Continental thought, philosophy of science, social theory and political philosophy. (shrink)

While typically unapologetic in expressing admiration, notably Gilles Deleuze admits his concern one time, in passing, that Gilbert Simondon's thought might hide a pernicious kind of ‘disguised moralism’, in which the form of the transcendent lurks, the enemy of the philosophy of immanence. Might there in fact be an ulterior motive in Deleuze's concern? But might this potential critique invite its own reversal? That is, might Deleuze's accusation be in fact a strategy for teasing out what, perhaps, is unrecognisable as (...) such, but structurally essential for how Simondon constructs his onto-epistemological goals? Moreover, might this Simondonian response, unmasked, not only deflect but anticipate a ‘critique’ like Deleuze's? Extending this question further reveals I believe the implications for Simondon's ‘ethics without morality’, bringing him closer to Deleuze's interpretation of Spinoza. As a result, Deleuze's ‘critique’ invites the question: ‘What exactly is Spinozan in Simondon's ethics?’ Such a question compels our re-evaluation of humanism, its underlying prerogatives, if now in light of its consequences, the re-evaluation of poststructuralism: first, because it is predicated on the critique of the humanistic subject and, second, because ‘poststructuralism’ has come to designate how Simondon's relatedness is determined to Deleuze. (shrink)

Transposing differences -- Meta(l)morphoses: women, aliens, and machines -- Animals and other anomalies -- The cosmic buzz of insects -- Matter-realist feminism -- Intensive genre and the demise of gender -- Postsecular paradoxes -- Against methodological nationalism -- Nomadic European citizenship -- Powers of affirmation -- Sustainable ethics and the body in pain -- Forensic futures -- A secular prayer.

A theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, Karen Barad elaborates her theory of agential realism, a schema that is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics.

Introduction -- Spinoza : a user's guide -- The curious incident of the rude driver in the SUV -- What's love got to do with it? -- On not being oneself or the shmoopy effect -- The big picture -- What is mind? : no matter : what is matter? : never mind -- True freedom -- Bodies in motion -- The body politic -- Religion -- The environment -- Conclusion: How to be a Spinozist in three easy steps.

This first collection of essays, by renowned critics and philosophers, outlines the central tenets of Simondon's thought, the implications of his work in numerous disciplines and his relationship to other thinkers such as Heidegger, Deleuze ...

"... no other book undertakes to relate all these French philosophers to each other the way that [Lawlor] does, brilliantly." —François Raffoul For many, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze represent one of the greatest movements in French philosophy. But these philosophers and their works did not materialize without a philosophical heritage. In Thinking through French Philosophy, Leonard Lawlor shows how the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty formed an important current in sustaining the development of structuralism and post-structuralism. Seeking the (...) "point of diffraction," or the specific ideas and concepts that link Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, Lawlor discovers differences and convergences in these thinkers who worked the same terrain. Major themes include metaphysics, archaeology, language and documentation, expression and interrogation, and the very experience of thinking. Lawlor’s focus on the experience of the question brings out critical differences in immanence and transcendence. This illuminating and provocative book brings new vitality to debates on contemporary French philosophy. (shrink)

Across 13 essays "e; 12 of which were previously unavailable in English "e; Deleuze specialist Anne Sauvagnargues reveals the continuing potential of Deleuze, Guattari and Simondon to invent new concepts and new modes of creativity and existence. She redeploys their work, together with other key philosophers including Bergson, Lacan, Deligny and Ruyer, to create new concepts including geophilosophy, the artmachine, the ritornello, schizoanalysis and the machinic assemblage.

As a young philosopher Gilbert Simondon identified technology as a site of obsession, anxiety, and misunderstanding within contemporary culture. “Culture,” he wrote, “has become a system of defense designed to safeguard man from technics” (Mode of Existence, 1). According to Simondon, technique and technology ubiquitously structured thought and practice, especially in the contemporary world, yet philosophical tradition relegated the technical to an obscure zone of conceptual neglect. Simondon took the intimacy and obscurity that surrounded our relation to the technical as (...) a clarion call to philosophy. Over the course of thirty-odd years of philosophizing, he examined the relation of the technical to the cultural .. (shrink)