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Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society: Moral Science in the Scottish Enlightenment

Craig Smith

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the ... More

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the leading exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to develop a science of man and was among the first in the English speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society, and political science. This book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about Ferguson’s thinking. It explores how Ferguson sought to create a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising with a view to supporting the virtuous education of the British elite. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a nostalgic republican sceptical about modernity, and instead is one much closer to the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment’s defence of eighteenth century British commercial society.Less

Adam Smith and Rousseau: Ethics, Politics, Economics

Maria Pia Paganelli, Dennis C. Rasmussen, and Craig Smith (eds)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are two of the foremost thinkers of the European Enlightenment, thinkers who made seminal contributions to moral and political philosophy and who shaped some of ... More

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are two of the foremost thinkers of the European Enlightenment, thinkers who made seminal contributions to moral and political philosophy and who shaped some of the key concepts of modern political economy. Among Smith’s first published works was a letter to the Edinburgh Review where he discusses Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Smith continued to engage with Rousseau’s work and to explore many shared themes such as sympathy, political economy, sentiment, and inequality. This collection brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of Adam Smith and Rousseau scholars to provide an exploration of the key shared concerns of these two great thinkers in politics, philosophy, economics, history, and literature.Less

Affects, Actions and Passions in Spinoza: The Unity of Body and Mind

Chantal Jaquet

Nowadays there is a great enthusiasm for the Spinozan conception of the union of mind and body among modern researchers, such as Damasio. The fact that the Spinozan model has become very relevant is ... More

Nowadays there is a great enthusiasm for the Spinozan conception of the union of mind and body among modern researchers, such as Damasio. The fact that the Spinozan model has become very relevant is an opportunity to reflect on the impact and value of these references to Spinoza, which historians of philosophy eye with caution because they are all too often based on second-hand knowledge, and frequently distort the philosopher's thought. That is why it is crucial to reexamine the question of the mind-body relationship and its affective modalities in Spinoza from a philosophical angle and identify a model for interpreting it that is capable of informing contemporary debates.Less

Affirming Divergence: Deleuze's Reading of Leibniz

Alex Tissandier

Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with ... More

Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with Leibniz. In doing so it hopes to offer a focused framework for understanding some of the most difficult aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. Part One examines Deleuze’s account of the “anti-Cartesian reaction” of Spinoza and Leibniz which culminates in their two competing theories of expression. It argues that in some key respects Deleuze favours Leibniz’s interpretation of this key concept over Spinoza’s. Part Two looks at Deleuze’s critique of representation and his attempt to create a theory of difference that will underlie, rather than rely upon, conceptual opposition. It examines the crucial role played by the Leibnizian concepts of incompossibility and divergence in Deleuze’s theory of ‘vice-diction’, created in order to offer a sub-representational, or pre-individual, substitute for Hegelian contradiction. Part Three looks in detail at one of Deleuze’s last major works, The Fold. It argues for Leibniz’s central place in this text, and shows how Deleuze uses concepts from across Leibniz’s philosophy and mathematics as a framework to articulate a systematic account of his own mature philosophy.Less

The Afterlives of Georges Perec

Rowan Wilken and Justin Clemens (eds)

Georges Perec is widely acknowledged as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His far-reaching influence has inspired many fields of creativity, extending far beyond literature ... More

Georges Perec is widely acknowledged as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His far-reaching influence has inspired many fields of creativity, extending far beyond literature itself.The Afterlives of Georges Perec examines the impact of Perec’s ideas, writing and analytical experimentation in architecture, art and design, media, electronic communications and computing, and studies of the everyday. It asks: what are the lessons that architects, artists, game-designers and writers can draw from Perec’s fascination with creative constraints? What do his descriptions of the minutiae of everyday life reveal about use of information and communications technologies? What happens if we readLife A User’s Manual as a toolbox of ideas for games studies? How might his fascination with the ‘infra-ordinary’ shed light on the uses of contemporary social media? What insights might Perec’s use of algorithmic writing generate for the digital humanities? Through an examination of such questions, this collection takes Perec scholarship beyond its existing limits to offer new ways of rethinking our present.Less

Agamben and Radical Politics

Daniel McLoughlin (ed.)

Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty was profoundly influential for critical theory as it grappled with issues of security and state violence in the wake of September 11 2001. Yet his work was ... More

Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty was profoundly influential for critical theory as it grappled with issues of security and state violence in the wake of September 11 2001. Yet his work was criticised for its lack of attention to capitalism and liberal governmentality, and it was argued that he ignored the problem of political action. Issues of economy and political praxis have become even more urgent for critical theory over the past decade as it has confronted the crisis of neoliberal capitalism and an increasingly turbulent and populist politics. Agamben and Radical Politics suggests that Agamben’s work retains its urgency for understanding the issues that underpin the politics of our time. It does so by focusing on his recent work on the theological history of economy, his account of a non-sovereign politics, and his longstanding engagement with the revolutionary tradition. The book includes a newly translated essay by Agamben, entitled ‘Capitalism as Religion,’ and ten chapters that critically engage with him on issues including the genealogy of economy, the practices of monasticism and use, temporality and historical method, and his relationship to Marxism and anarchism. The volume sheds new light on Agamben’s work by focusing on his treatment of economy and poitical action and, through this, opens up new ways of thinking about politics and critical theory in an age of financial crisis and political revolts.Less

Agamben's Philosophical Lineage

Adam Kotsko and Carlo Salzani (eds)

One of the greatest challenges Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources he draws upon in his work. This volume is a one-stop reference for clarifying ... More

One of the greatest challenges Agamben presents to his readers is the vast and often bewildering range of sources he draws upon in his work. This volume is a one-stop reference for clarifying Agamben’s relationship to the many figures he engages with, providing a wide range of articles by scholars with special expertise in Agamben and the figure in question. It covers his primary interlocutors, his more occasional and secondary points of reference as well as figures who are often lurking in the background of his arguments but are seldom directly mentioned. The result is a thorough overview of Agamben’s philosophy, as illuminated by his practices of reading.Less

Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black

Athena Athanasiou

Drawing on a wide range of contemporary social and political thought, the book engages with a feminist dissident movement: namely, former Yugoslavia’s “Women in Black” (Žene u Crnom orŽuC) and its ... More

Drawing on a wide range of contemporary social and political thought, the book engages with a feminist dissident movement: namely, former Yugoslavia’s “Women in Black” (Žene u Crnom orŽuC) and its practices of performative mourning for the abjected other. This agonistic mourning involves standing still in public, wearing black, and holding vigils to acknowledge the victims of the “other side.” In performatively occupying the position of the internal enemy, these political actors respond to those estranged as external enemies. By re-positioning their political bodies at the centre of the polis as a means of embodying their own and others’ ambivalent and precarious belonging vis-à-vis its demarcation lines, the activists bring intolerable memories into public view. Hence, they actualize the multilayered modalities of stasis as standing still but also taking the stand as embodied traces of those who had been stripped of their capacity to testify within the nationalist and militarist banality that led to ethno-nationalist violence in what has become the former Yugoslavia. In commemorating those socially instituted as impossible to commemorate, and in upsetting the grounds of mourning as a founding scene of maternal properness in nationalism, these dissident political subjects contest the idealized mourning inscribed in the genealogies of biopolitical normalization and ethno-national militarism. The book addresses agonistic mourning as a critical practice of contesting the power assemblage of sovereignty, biopolitics and nationalism.Less

Animal Writing: Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy

Danielle Sands

Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical ... More

Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical distancing from the sometimes claustrophobic proximity of empathy – currently the prevailing mode in Animal Studies – this book interrogates the claims made of empathy without exchanging it for the kind of abstract, disembodied reason which has long disavowed the ethical status of nonhuman life. This book is particularly interested in the stories that we tell, and are told, by beings at the edges of animal life, insects, and the possibility that the indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke might form the basis for an ethics which is not bounded by empathy. Across five interdisciplinary chapters, it asks: is it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? How might we develop approaches to nonhuman life which are affectively and critically informed? It contends that reframing the human in relation to the elements of itself which it denounces as inhuman can inform a renewed attentiveness to nonhuman life.Less

Architectural Materialisms: Nonhuman Creativity

Maria Voyatzaki (ed.)

This book gathers 14 voices from a diverse group of architects, designers, performing artists, film makers, media theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and programmers. By transversally crossing ... More

This book gathers 14 voices from a diverse group of architects, designers, performing artists, film makers, media theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and programmers. By transversally crossing disciplinary boundaries, new and profound insights into contemporary thinking and creating architecture emerge. The book is at the forefront of the current contemplation on matter and its significance for and within architecture. The premise is that matter in posthuman times has to be rethought in the rich and multifaceted context of contemporary computational architecture, and in the systemic and ecological context of pervasive computer simulations. Combining the dynamism of materiality and the capacities of nonhuman machines towards prototyping spatiotemporal designs and constructs, leads to alternative conceptions of the human, of ethics, aesthetics and politics in this world yet-to-come. The reader, through the various approaches presented by the authors’ perspectives, will appreciate that creativity can come from allowing matter to take the lead in the feedback loop of the creative process towards a relevant outcome evaluated as such by a matter of concern actualised within the ecological milieu of design. The focus is on the authors’ speculative dimension in their multifaceted role of discussing materiality by recognising that a transdisciplinary mode is first and foremost a speculative praxis in our effort to trace materiality and its affects in creativity. The book is not interested in discussing technicalities and unidirectional approaches to materiality, and retreats from a historical linear timeline of enquiry whilst establishing a sectional mapping of materiality’s importance in the emergent future of architecture.Less

Aristotle on the Matter of Form: A Feminist Metaphysics of Generation

Adriel M. Trott

This book argues that nature even in generation in Aristotle should be understood on an emergent model that sees a unity in the four causes. The model of artifice divides form from matter, where ... More

This book argues that nature even in generation in Aristotle should be understood on an emergent model that sees a unity in the four causes. The model of artifice divides form from matter, where material only appears as already informed because it is itself natural, but functions in artifice as the stuff for form. Natural generation, and thus nature, appears to follow this model insofar as form in the figure of semen appears to impose itself on matter as menses, making form the superior and positive power that is the contrary to matter, which lacks and seeks after form. This book affirms the internal source of movement view by arguing that form in generation is working in and through matter and that matter has a character of its own, suggesting the Möbius strip as a model for the relationship. Semen does the work of form through the material that makes it semen; semen’s matter has its own power to contribute to form, not reducible to its relationship to form. The book presents arguments against the existence of species form and prime matter in Aristotle and canvasses ancient Greek depictions of the feminine in order to situate the specifics of Aristotle’s account of material in the composition and working of semen and menses in generation and sex differentiation. It concludes by canvassing the places Aristotle uses the analogy to craft to show how they work in specific contexts.Less

Artmaking in the Age of Global Capitalism: Visual Practices, Philosophy, Politics

Jan Bryant

What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods ... More

What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods and political implications of artists or filmmakers working in a contemporary western art context today. Leading into extended analyses of works by Frances Barrett, Claire Denis, Angela Brennan, and Alex Monteith, the book considers two forces that have informed contemporary artmaking: the economic conditions that began changing social realities from the 1970s forward; and the current tendency of the political aesthetic to move away from direct political content or didacticism to a concern for the sensate effects of materials. This is framed by Jacques Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’ and Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism. As historical ground for understanding the contemporary condition, Artmaking in the Age of Global Economics pays particular attention to the divisions that opened up between progressive writers, theorists and artists in the late 20th century. Suggesting an alternative approach to understanding art’s historical antecedents, it avoids received art-historical narratives or canonical figures, refuting both the autonomy of art as well as the separation of artist from the work they produce. It locates, instead, contemporary art in a worldly context of responsibility that opens up to an ethics of practice. [211]Less

Badiou and Cinema

Alex Ling

This book offers an in-depth examination of cinema and its philosophical significance. It employs the philosophy of Alain Badiou to answer the question central to all serious film scholarship – ... More

This book offers an in-depth examination of cinema and its philosophical significance. It employs the philosophy of Alain Badiou to answer the question central to all serious film scholarship – namely, ‘can cinema be thought?’ Treating this question on three levels, the author first asks if we can really think what cinema is, at an ontological level. Second, he investigates whether cinema can actually think for itself; that is, whether or not it is truly ‘artistic’. Finally, the author explores in what ways we can rethink the consequences of the fact that cinema thinks. In answering these questions, he uses well-known films ranging from Hiroshima mon amour to Vertigo to The Matrix to illustrate Badiou's philosophy, as well as to consider the ways in which his work can be extended, critiqued and reframed with respect to the medium of cinema.Less

Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature

Jean-Jacques Lecercle

Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? And to what extent does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? Anyone who has read contemporary European philosophers has ... More

Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? And to what extent does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? Anyone who has read contemporary European philosophers has had to ask such questions. This book is an attempt to answer them, by considering the ‘strong readings’ Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze impose on the texts they read. The author demonstrates that philosophers need literature as much as literary critics need philosophy: it is an exercise not in the philosophy of literature (where literature is a mere object of analysis), but in philosophy and literature, a heady and unusual mix.Less

Badiou and Plato: An Education by Truths

A J Bartlett

This book is an interrogation of Plato's entire work using the concepts and categories of Alain Badiou. It critically addresses and draw consequences from Badiou's claim that his work is a ‘Platonism ... More

This book is an interrogation of Plato's entire work using the concepts and categories of Alain Badiou. It critically addresses and draw consequences from Badiou's claim that his work is a ‘Platonism of the multiple’ and that philosophy today requires a ‘platonic gesture’. Examining the relationship between Badiou and Plato, the book transforms our perception of Plato's philosophy and rethinks the central philosophical question: ‘what is education?’ The book corrects many errors in the existing commentary on Badiou's work and extracts a key Platonic theme crucial at every level of culture today: education.Less

The Becoming of the Body: Contemporary Women's Writing in French

Amaleena Damlé

Following a long tradition of objectification, twentieth-century French feminism has often sought to liberate the female body from the confines of patriarchal logos and to inscribe its rhythms in ... More

Following a long tradition of objectification, twentieth-century French feminism has often sought to liberate the female body from the confines of patriarchal logos and to inscribe its rhythms in writing. But how has the promotion of ‘women’s writing’ in such thought and literature evolved in the years preceding and following the turn of the millennium? What sorts of bodily questions and problems do contemporary female writers evoke? How are traditional conceptions of the boundaries of the female body contested, exceeded or transformed? And how do contemporary philosophical discourses correspond to the ways that literary authors conceptualize, and write, the female body? This book addresses such questions by exploring the intersections between a range of contemporary texts, including the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, recent feminist and queer thought, and contemporary writers Amélie Nothomb, Ananda Devi, Marie Darrieussecq and Nina Bouraoui. Revealing an emphasis on the becoming of the body in recent culture, it illuminates the implications of such a concept for a feminist politics, for women’s writing and for the cultural signification of contemporary female corporeality.Less

Bergson and the Art of Immanence: Painting, Photography, Film

Charlotte de Mille

John Mullarkey (ed.)

Bergson and The Art of Immanence is the first book to bring Henri Bergson’s philosophy of immanence together with the latest ideas in art-theory and the practice of immanent art as found in painting, ... More

Bergson and The Art of Immanence is the first book to bring Henri Bergson’s philosophy of immanence together with the latest ideas in art-theory and the practice of immanent art as found in painting, photography, and film. This new collection of essays from world-renowned art theorists, philosophers, and Bergson-scholars will provide both a wide historical context and a rigorous conceptual framework for contemporary art-theory and practice involving the concepts of rhythmic duration, perception, affectivity, the body, memory, and intuition – all of which were given their first systematic theorization in the twentieth-century as immanent objects through the work of Bergson.Less

Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality

Frida Beckman

Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also ... More

Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also searching for the possibility of claiming sexual pleasure as a constructive and politically enabling notion today. In the face of the way in which Deleuze’s theory of desire builds on a rejection of the usefulness of pleasure, this book works to construct a Deleuzian theory of sexuality that is inclusive of pleasure. Intervening into contemporary fields of research including posthumanist-, disability-, animal-, and feminist studies as well as into current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Between Desire and Pleasure works to contribute to cultural, conceptual, and political debates about sexuality.Less

Butler and Ethics

Moya Lloyd (ed.)

This edited volume explores Judith Butler’s work on ethics. It focuses on questions such as whether there has been an ‘ethical turn’ in her work or whether Butler’s increasing emphasis on ethics is ... More

This edited volume explores Judith Butler’s work on ethics. It focuses on questions such as whether there has been an ‘ethical turn’ in her work or whether Butler’s increasing emphasis on ethics is merely the culmination of ideas inherent in her earlier writing. Precisely what kind of debt does Butler owe Levinas? What role does affect play in her most recent writings? How do ethics, politics, and affect connect to her increasing concern with violence, war, and conflict? What relation does Butler envisage between grievability and sensate democracy? How do her discussions of ethico-politics relate to her earlier understanding of politics as subversion? What is the nature of the relation between ethics and politics in her recent thinking?Less

Cold War Legacies: Systems, Theory, Aesthetics

John Beck and Ryan Bishop (eds)

What are the legacies of the Cold War? This interdisciplinary collection explores how, in a number of fundamental ways, contemporary life and thought continue to be shaped by theories, technologies ... More

What are the legacies of the Cold War? This interdisciplinary collection explores how, in a number of fundamental ways, contemporary life and thought continue to be shaped by theories, technologies and attitudes that were forged during World War II and developed into organisational structures during the long Cold War. From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we live in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War.Less