Rick Dolphijn - Michel Serres and the Crises of the Contemporary

MICHEL SERRES AND THE CRISES OF THE CONTEMPORARY

Michel Serres and Material Futures

Serres is a radically disruptive thinker with respect to the history of philosophy, the practice of philosophy and the future of enquiry. His writings stretch from the sixties of the last century to up to the minute discussions of ecological and economic crisis.

This book series will provide discussion both of the various stages and aspects of his own writings, and extend the discussion to developing responses to questions and problems of and for philosophy, which his writings have brought to the attention of his readers. The return of a concern in philosophy for mathematical innovation is one such area of interest, as indeed is the focus on ecology and climate change

SERIES EDITORS:

Professor Joanna Hodge of Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Professor David Webb of University of Staffordshire, UK

SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD:

Professor Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Spark Professor of English, Penn State University, PA, USA

Professor Steve Connor, Grace Two Professor of English, University of Cambridge, UK

Dr Diane Morgan, Senior Lecturer, School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, UK

Professor Dan Smith, Department of Philosophy, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University, IL, USA

Professor Iris van der Tuin, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Dr Chris Watkin, Senior Lecturer, French Studies, Monash, Melbourne, Australia

OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES:

Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres, Vera Bhlmann

MICHEL SERRES AND THE CRISES OF THE CONTEMPORARY

Edited By
RICK DOLPHIJN

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain 2019

Copyright Rick Dolphijn and contributors, 2019

Rick Dolphijn has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work.

Cover design: Irene Martinez-Costa

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ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6069-2

ePDF: 978-1-3500-6070-8

eBook: 978-1-3500-6071-5

Series: Michel Serres and Material Futures

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CONTENTS

Rick Dolphijn

David Webb

Vera Bhlmann

Lucie Kim-Chi Mercier

Eugenie Brinkema

Matteo Pasquinelli

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren

Rick Dolphijn

Patricia MacCormack

Interview with Michel Serres by Janina Pigaht, Documentary Filmmaker, and Rick Dolphijn, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, translated (from the French) by Joeri Visser

Everything communicates with everything else. This simple principle has guided Serres meticulous and inventive examination of the material world, and the sense to be made of it, since the publication of his earliest writings over fifty years ago. His peregrinations have been directed by his readings of German polymath Georg Wilhelm Leibniz, and of Roman atomist Lucretius, and informed by responsiveness to current developments in mathematical topology and information theory. The juxtaposition of old and new, careful reading of historical text and sensitivity to current context are distinctive.

The immense range of his writing is marked by a profound respect for the specificity of the matter in hand. Serres moves cautiously from the local to the global. His writing navigates a route not just through a problematic, or within a given discipline, but also across the disciplines, between the sciences, philosophy, literature, mathematics, mythology, art, history and anthropology, and from problem domain to problem domain.

Serres work is experimental, dynamic and open. At a time when more of his writing is becoming available in English translation, the aims of this new series of publications are to develop a positive and critical reception of this work and to create opportunities for those inspired by it to continue to innovate.

Joanna Hodge

David Webb

Eugenie Brinkema is associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals including Angelaki, Camera Obscura, Criticism, differences, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, qui parle and World Picture. Her first book, The Forms of the Affects, was published by Duke University Press in 2014.

Vera Bhlmann is professor for architectural theory at the Technical University in Vienna, and head of its Department of Architectural Theory and Philosophy of Technics. Together with Ludger Hovestadt, she is also head of the applied virtuality lab at the Institute for Technology in Architecture ITA at ETH Zurich. She is the author of Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres, which appears in this same book series.

Rick Dolphijn is associate professor at Utrecht University and honorary associate professor at Hong Kong University (20172020). He wrote Foodscapes (2014), New Materialism (2012) with Iris van der Tuin, and edited This Deleuzian Century (2015) and Philosophy After Nature (2017), both with Rosi Braidotti. He is now finishing work on the Cracks of the Contemporary.

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is professor and director of the Common Core at the University of Hong Kong. Previously, he served as associate vice chancellor at the University of Washington-Bothell, as a Fulbright Scholar, and as a visiting professor at Utrecht Universitys ICON. Currently, he is writing on transdisciplinarity, philosophy and the city.

Patricia MacCormack is Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University. She is the author of Cinesexuality (2008) and Posthuman Ethics (2012), the editor of The Animal Catalyst: Toward Ahuman Theory(2014) and the co-editor of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema (2008), Deleuze and the Animal (2017) and Ecosophical Aesthetics (2018). She publishes extensively in the posthuman, queer theory, animal studies, horror film and Continental Philosophy.

Lucie Kim-Chi Mercier is lecturer in philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, London, where she obtained her PhD in 2015. Her research focuses on the philosophy of translation, epistemology and history, 1960s French thought, as well as postcolonial and critical race philosophy. She is a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective.

Matteo Pasquinelli is professor of media philosophy at the University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe, where he is coordinating the research group on critical machine intelligence, KIM. He recently edited the anthology Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas (Meson Press), among other books. For Verso Books he is preparing a monograph provisionally titled The Eye of the Master: Capital as Computation Cognition. Website: http://matteopasquinelli.org.