Open Humanities Press has an exciting new book series coming out. Readers are encouraged to circulate this posting as widely as possible.
New Metaphysics
Series editors: Graham Harman and Bruno Latour
The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphysics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analytic-continental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the continental reverence for dusty textual monuments. We favor instead the spirit of the intellectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical “sound” from any nation of the world. The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical classics, and will consider secondary works of special force and daring. But our main interest is to stimulate the birth of disturbing masterpieces of twenty-first century philosophy. Please send project descriptions (not full manuscripts) to Graham Harman, graham@rinzai.com.
Open Humanities Press is an international Open Access publishing collective. OHP was formed by scholars to overcome the current crisis in publishing that threatens intellectual freedom and academic rigor worldwide. All OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published under open access licenses, and freely and immediately available online through www.openhumanitiespress.org.
Speculative Heresy 
I still haven’t found out about the Simondon yet, but is it weird that I’d really like to pursue some of Ruyer’s work? I mean, he’s virtually untranslated, and his work is so extensive…Lacan had an interest for his Neo-finalism and Deleuze was enamored with just about everything he wrote.
There is at least one scholar who has written on Ruyer more than once…Paul Bains. He has an essay called “Subjectless Subjectivities” about Deleuze and Ruyer (mainly Ruyer), along with a book called the Primacy of Semiosis…But, I haven’t seen much more than that.
To be truthful, there is probably more written in French about Ruyer than about Guattari…at least there is one scholarly book that has been written about Ruyer in French.
In any case, I think it’s really cool that we’re advertizing their series! I assume then, that they have sealed the deal with OHP?
Yes Taylor, the deal is sealed. OHP has only done journals so far, and we will be the first or of the first book series.
The business model is a killer. We the series editors get complete editorial control. Copyediting and the printing of hard copies of the books will be done by major university libraries. The motive of the libraries in doing so? I assume they’re simply tired of getting reamed by piratical hardcover publishers in the humanities. If I were a university librarian, I would long since have been disgusted by the pricing stunts pulled with books such as Brassier’s, Grant’s, and Toscano’s. (Already this year I have *refused* to recommend a couple of good books to our library in Cairo, even though it’s not my own money, just because I’m tired of seeing my employer get screwed by academic bandits.)
Ultimately, I would expect that we will dispense with hard copies altogether, though that will be decided at a higher level than series editor. Soon everyone will have Kindle-type devices for at least a certain percentage of their reading. And hard copies eventually won’t be needed to convince tenure and promotion committees that we’re talking about legitimate books and not just PDF’s randomly posted on the web.
In the past, the hurdle of having to convince some publisher to invest thousands of dollars in your manuscript was not such a bad indicator of relative quality and interest. But the system has been abused on all sides. New criteria of quality and impact will be needed once we are all able to self-publish PDF’s that are the same as the PDF’s that will replace paper books at major presses.
Normal websites already had to go through a similar sifting process. My little nephew’s webpage is the same size as the official page of the Pentagon. So with the coming erosion of physical differentiators between books (all PDF’s are PDF’s), how will we measure traffic and impact? (Paradoxically, in some ways it will be *easier* to hierarchize digital works in terms of impact, since sophsticated counting technologies exists here in a way that they do not for paper books, other than brute sales figures.)
Moreover, will present-day concepts of academic rank be able to survive this major publishing revolution? Many of the most thoughtful philosophy bloggers today have only B.A. degrees or are not in Departments of Philosophy at all. Many of my colleagues, with Ph.D.’s and Full Professorships and years of experience, aren’t 5% as interesting as most of the posters on Speculative Heresy and related sites. So, why do they outrank you within the guild? Why can’t I have you guys as my colleagues instead? Eventually I think academia will go through a revolution as profound as that already experienced by newspapers. And there will probably be many casualties.
Taylor, there was a lot of talk about Ruyer at the Toulouse conference. I must admit I’d barely heard of him before then. We’ll definitely consider translations for the New Metaphysics series, but as you probably know, a few of the French publishers are draconian about rights fees, and we will have little to no money to pay for rights since we don’t expect to have a lot of earnings. It’s open access, of course.
Money for rights fees can sometimes be had through the French Ministry of Culture. Something to consider.
Reading your predictions about academic publishing I have to say I hope you’re not right about some of it. I would really hate to lost my library the way I’ve lost my music library. It’s not just romanticism, sitting down with a book and a pen is also just easier than dealing with the technology of the Kindle. Academic libraries are certainly struggling under the cost of keeping academic libraries alive and that’s a problem, but what stops publishers from charging the same amount for the rights to the PDF book? The university I’m at (Nottingham) has tried to buy a majority of their new books in electronic format and it’s just a nightmare to use it.
That said, I think this sounds like it’s a great idea (your series that is) and I’m glad that there are people working to try to figure out how to get these sorts of materials to people rather than just on a CV.
Personally, I’m happier with my iPod than with any other music library I’ve ever had. I haven’t tried a Kindle or any equivalent device, but generally tend to think that brilliant engineers will solve the practical problems.
What I’m most excited by, though, is the potential that new media have to change our prose. The paper book as a medium has many virtues, but also tends to encourage wordy, long-winded, overly footnoted academic monstrosities of writing. If you posted that sort of stuff on a blog no one would read it, and rightly not. I happen to like the punchy, provocative style of political coverage that we see on blogs better than typical newspaper editorials, for instance.
In fact, I’m already scrapping the existing drafts of my next book and trying to rethink the project in terms of electronic media. What would an outstanding philosophy book written specially for the Kindle look like? It shouldn’t just be an old-fashioned print philosophy book made more efficient for electronic purposes. It should be something that capitalizes on the strengths of the new medium, and in a definitive rather than merely trendy way.
“but what stops publishers from charging the same amount for the rights to the PDF book?”
When people stop buying from them.
The established publishers may resist because their livelihood is at stake. But what if the next wave of philosophers all publishes open access; for the simple reason that they want more readers?
Levi Bryant told me how many hits he gets per day at Larval Subjects, and it is greater than the total lifetime sales of my first book (which, moreover, is regarded as a great success by the publisher).
“Personally, I’m happier with my iPod than with any other music library I’ve ever had. I haven’t tried a Kindle or any equivalent device, but generally tend to think that brilliant engineers will solve the practical problems.”
Yeah, I think there are a lot of problems with the Kindle so far, but I have no doubt that in the near future someone like Apple will radically re-think the whole interface of an e-text and make it much more user-friendly. It’s not a question of if, only a matter of when. The technology has to be there too (the Kindle, for example, is still far too bulky to carry around like a book), but that’s only a temporary setback.
And the iPod is a good parallel – it’s amazing to be able to carry around 10,000 songs or more in the palm of my hand. And some future iBook will be equally as amazing when we can carry around our entire library in a book-sized device. This is especially pertinent for most of us who have to move around the world for PhDs or academic positions. I’m currently contemplating moving across an ocean, and I’m rather dismayed at the prospect of having to leave most of my books in my home country. But if the Kindle were better and more functional, I’d be able to just stow it in my carry-on and take my entire library with me. (As it is, I have a lot of books in PDF form, but reading on a screen is much less enjoyable than reading on paper so far.)
“The established publishers may resist because their livelihood is at stake. But what if the next wave of philosophers all publishes open access; for the simple reason that they want more readers?”
I think this is a good point too. There’s constant complaints about how academia is becoming driven by profits and business values, but by supporting open-access publishing we can actually do something to resist this encroachment. Which is why I really like this book series (and publishers like re:press) who are really trying hard to legitimize this form of publishing.
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It’s hard when trying to weigh out the benefits and drawbacks of paper copies vs. pdf versions. For example, I think that there is a truth behind the fact that paper copies are easier to read or easier on the eyes, but then you come to the fact that most paper copies do not sustain repeat readings, let alone one reading! I hate to think because I enjoy reading Difference and Repetition or some other paper text that that same joy is the actual destruction of the material text simultaneously.
I think that the pdf solves that problem, though, because I know that when I’ve had to translate essays, the easiest thing to do was to make a pdf, and then print it out. There, I have a copy that I can mark up and down, scribble on if I please, and I have not damaged the actual text for a future reading, either with my hand or my pen. It may defeat the purpose to print it off, some might say, because you could have just gotten the book version. But, although I love to mark in my own books, I think it’s more convenient to be able to print at my convenience.
As for Ruyer, or Lautman, or Ravaisson, or some other obscure figure in the philosophical field who has gone more than half a century with virtually no translations at all……I would wager that the question of rights fees may be low to…null. I’m not the editor of a French press, but I would think that for there to be an interest at all in English after so long has passed….well, who would have thought they’d have a chance at a second life? And why botch that because of some sort of material gain which just does not seem logical considering the market and mindset of most presses willing to take on the wager that obscurity in terms of symbolic capital does not amount to the same as obscurity in intellectual value. I could be possibly a bit idealistic here…..I mean, on the other hand, I would be willing to translate Ruyer gratis if I knew it would spark some excitement…
I cite as my one example the joy I had to meet Leonard Lawler at SPEP last November…He obviously was someone I esteemed because of his translation of Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence…
I told him about my desire to see Ruyer in translation, and he just sort of chortled at the idea that anyone would be interested in such an obscure figure. Not that he scoffed at Ruyer himself, for he showed admiration for the figure and the idea, but basically refuted the possibility. Yet I find it slightly odd, for Hyppolite is only circumstantially more relevant than Ruyer, and maybe even only due to his role as a translator and commentator of Hegel, or due to his role as teacher of Foucault and Deleuze (though I do not mean to detract from such feats which are incredible in themselves, though by no means less obscure or more notable than the work of Ruyer). And maybe I’m off base here, but as Deleuze says in D+R, philosophy is a sort of collage, but when you’re stuck in the dominant mode of the History of Philosophy, you don’t really see the fractal edges of the patchwork quilt, you don’t feel the asperities in the real multiplicity of voices that are reduced to a single spokesperson per zeitgeist. For example, if you look at Merleau-Ponty through Ruyer, what seems to emerge is this carnivalesque overturning where the minor voice shows just how trivial the problems that arise in a phenomenological psychology are…which may be to say, in short, that I do not feel that Ruyer subordinates himself to the dominant and dominating phenomenological inquiries of the twentieth century…he doesn’t bog himself down in it, he leaps over it, in a real, out-of-body-experience sort of way (or disembodied, to emphasize the ontology of the flesh so characteristic of MP).
At the end of the day it’ll be fine either way, I’m sure, as books have their own problems. I just don’t know if I share the revolutionary view of things like the Kindle or blogging. But no reason to be a grumpy old man about it and it really is secondary to the book series itself which is to be celebrated.
Can I ask though, continuing the devil’s advocate role from above, does it not seem, at times, that new publishing ventures like Re:press and even Collapse to a degree (though I have championed both to friends and colleagues, so I do hope I’m not brought up on charges before the party for saying this) have a certain aura of the vanity press or inside club to them? That should of course be followed up with the question about whether or not that is truly a bad thing, but I’m just putting it out there. I may be way off in saying that, but what other presses present more of, though this may be fantasy to a certain degree, is a sense of objectivity. Not sure though. Any thoughts on that?
I think that’s a entirely legitimate point – it’s a risk, certainly, to these types of open-access and less hierarchical forms of publishing. The risk being that the essential constraint for getting published becomes whether one is within the “in group” or not, whether one is attached to the right network of people or not.
I don’t think it’s a risk that can easily be eliminated (if at all), but I’d suggest that what will happen is that new ways of achieving that ‘objectivity’ will be created. Blogs are a good example, because virtually anyone can enter into ongoing debates without necessarily being associated with the established heavyweights. If their work is good, they’ll get the traffic and the recognition. (I think Splintering Bone Ashes is a great example here.) Similarly with open access publishing – if a press gets known simply as a means for a select group of people to publicize their stuff (and the quality’s not there), then they won’t get the traffic and the widespread use of their publications.
Which actually leads me to another point – even if Collapse and Re:press became vanity presses, they still undoubtedly have the quality to be worthwhile regardless. So I think in the end, it still comes down to the quality of the output – if it’s there, who cares whether it’s an insider’s club or not; and if the quality’s not there, then no manner of openness is going to resolve that.
A vanity press generally charges money for publication, and will generally accept almost anyone who pays. (Deliberate nonsense texts have successfully made it through the “vetting” process at such presses as pranks.) The situations to which you refer are obviously different.
In the case of Collapse, my understanding is that Robin Mackay simply invites whatever contributors he wants. That is his right, since he puts up all the money for the journal, and I’m sure he probably loses a bit on it still. That’s not a “vanity press”– it’s a journal with all invited contributions. How would he fix that “defect”? I guess he could fix it by having a general call for papers, blind refereeing, etc. But why should he do that when he’s putting up his own money, and when he’s getting enough good material to fit the vision he has of the journal? At the end of the day, Collapse needs to be judged by the quality of articles, which so far I think have been very high. There’s a real brilliance to Robin’s editorial vision, I believe. Moreover, I think this is how journals will be done in the future– individual editors will take responsibility for the quality of largely digital journals and book series, under penalty of their reputations plummeting. If Robin takes articles just because they are written by his friends, this will be noticed and gossip will quickly build against him. People talk.
re.press, same basic situation as Collapse, but with books… It seems to be a small number of people deciding what to publish there. But that often happens even at traditional presses, with one or sometimes zero outside referees involved in the process.
With Open Humanities Press it will be slightly different. There will be a lot of skepticism in the humanities about open access books, and that means that in the early years a fairly rigorous series of traditional-looking hurdles will need to be established for the acceptance of manuscripts, just to reassure the Captains of the Academy. There will be numerous outside referees in the case of the series I’m doing with Latour, and there may even have to be some dictatorial rules early on about the professional qualifications of authors, just because of initial skepticism about the medium.
In the past, the willingness of a publisher to invest thousands of dollars in producing and marketing your manuscript was taken as a guarantee of some degree of quality. With that hurdle soon to vanish, what externally differentiates a good book from some crank’s rambling PDF will be the *reputation* of the journal or series that publishes it. If Robin allows some junk into Collapse and produces a bad issue, then the reputation of the journal will take a hit. People will say “the heyday of Collapse is over”, or whatever, so Robin has a strong incentive to use discerning judgment, and so far he seems to have done so. Same with re.press. Same with my series– if Latour and I accept crap it will make us look stupid, so we will not do it. (And besides, there is a printing and copyediting process paid for by the libraries, along with a ceiling on how many books per year can be published.)
There is a real danger if people in universities start throwing around phrases like “vanity press” as a defensive reflex, as an indirect way of devaluing the emerging trends in philosophy. Is Collapse really inferior to Kant Studien or Continental Philosophy Review? The answer is pretty clearly no, if you look at all three of them, it’s just that Collapse is the least mappable onto current middle-of-the-road academic orthodoxies, and that will probably provoke some resentment as those orthodoxes are deserted en masse by the young. I already get more than my share of backhanded slaps about Collapse, speculative realism, etc. from panicky older colleagues who aren’t doing a damn thing for the profession anymore, and who know deep down that they are intellectually marooned in around the year 1985.
We’re going to probably start placing more of our trust in individuals than in names such as “Continuum” or “Palgrave”, which have frankly entered their decadence with pricing and other problems. Just as certain political bloggers rose above the masses with a reputation for discerning individual judgment, the same will slowly happen with journal and book series editors.
I largely don’t disagree with you. And, to be clear, by using the word “aura” I was trying to express that I don’t think Re:press or Collapse are on the vanity press model. I do not share, however, in the sense that these changes are revolutionary or even that speculative realism is a revolutionary, forever to be avant-garde philosophical movement. I can name a number of books that came out under the usual systems by philosophers who are rather happily Husserlian, or what have you, that have been incredibly good and could have spawned a whole host of interesting conversations. I know the usual refrain is that Continental philosophy only does commentary and that we’re now finally focusing on problems (though, interestingly, the main texts of Speculative Realism, aside from After Finitude, have largely been commentary based), but these books went beyond commentary in many respects but merely didn’t have sufficient hype behind them. What Speculative Realism has done is give a lot of hype to books that, on the whole, they lived up to. That is good, since we all agree that this work is interesting and good, but I don’t think we can infer from there this totally optimistic vision of the future that you have cast. Certain political bloggers rose above the masses largely for the same reason most things rise above the masses. Can you honestly say that Atrios deserves millions of hits a day? Or Andrew Sullivan? Or even Talking Points Memo which largely reports on mainstream reporting (which is pretty fucking awful as their “Day in 100 Seconds” clips show)? If the contemporary philosophical world, analytic or Continental, is ruled largely by doxa, how does this form of publishing based on individuals reputations and subtle forms of genius change that? I hope this is a fair question and it is not my intention to upset anyone here. Let me know if this is unproductive.
Anyway, I like Collapse. A lot. I like other journals too, but I’ve never bought a subscription to them like I did with Collapse (though this next issue isn’t really one I’m looking forward to, a whole issue devoted to Copernicus perhaps should have at least one philosophico-economic piece on the invention of money). And I’ll probably buy at least a few books in your series.
One other thing. How is it that Ruyer wouldn’t garner interest but Ravaisson would after not being translated for a hundred years? Perhaps contacting Claire Carlisle and Mark Sinclair and seeing what they did would be helpful. It may have something to do with Malabou providing the preface along the same lines that Meillassoux’s cause was helped by having Badiou’s name attached to the project. If that’s the case perhaps attaching someone to Ruyer would be helpful.
@Anthony Paul Smith…
You didn’t give any examples of “books (that) went beyond commentary in many respects but merely didn’t have sufficient hype behind them.” Fire away. Here’s your chance to promote them.
It seems to me that you’re trying to play both sides of the street– sometimes claiming that speculative realism is a mere hype machine, yet sort of conceding that the books lived up the hype, but then accusing partisans of it for being overly optimistic, all after saying that you largely agree with me. I’m losing track of your real position on any of these issues.
It’s best to just come out and make honest, blunt statements; that way you’re actually taking the risk of being proven wrong by reality. For now you’re simply making insinuations while trying to skip out on the check. You’re just eating at our expense.
I’ll live up to my own demand by making the following blunt statements, which you or others are perfectly welcome to contest:
1. There is a difference between good and mediocre books. (Relatively few published academic books are irredeemably *bad*, in my experience.)
2. There is a difference between primary and secondary literature, with the former *primarily* focused on philosophical problems even if numerous references are made to the tradition, and the latter *primarily* focused on the work of other thinkers even if a few cautious personal ideas are ventured.
3. Distinctions 1 & 2 are obviously not the same. There can be good or mediocre primary literature, and good or mediocre secondary literature.
4. Anglophone continental philosophy in recent decades has been *overwhelmingly* saturated with secondary literature, some of it good and some mediocre. We could almost count up the number of successful primary works in a phone chat lasting just a minute or two.
5. Hence, it is time for Anglophone continental philosophy to enter a phase of producing more primary literature, unless we want to be pigeonholed forever as mere historians– a label we have largely deserved.
6. Some of that primary literature may turn out to be mediocre or even worse. But so what? That’s how it is with music, films, restaurants, New Year’s Eve parties, and everything else that humans do.
7. Some of it may even turn out to be “hyped”. That’s fine too. Over time the hyped stuff tends to get exposed for what it is.
8. But the idea that the very difference between primary and secondary literature is *itself* the mere product of hype seems obviously false.
Or rather, it seems obviously to be a defensive reflex of an Anglophone continental philosophy industry that does not wish to face up to its own largely derivative character.
The New Metaphysics series will probably make some mistakes and publish some things that are not as good as the others. Some of it might not even be as good as the best of the commentaries on Husserl at which you hint.
But some sort of rallying point for autonomous, original work is badly needed within our tradition. You don’t need a French passport to speak in your own voice.
I was unaware of the expense I was causing! As for blunt statements, I’m just expressing some misgivings about Open Publishing presumed revolutionary character and the recent all pervasive (on blogs) internal hatred of Continental philosophy. You’ve misunderstood me on a number of disconnected points by connecting them. This is likely owing to my presentation. I’ll try to clarify, though you are of course free to disagree, and by all means don’t pick up the check.
Hype isn’t bad and having a hype machine isn’t some kind of a moral failing. The fact that Speculative Realism has been so hyped in some quarters has caused a lot of people to consider some ideas they wouldn’t have otherwise. Hype was behind Derrida’s rise and I think much of it was deserved and caused some interesting and useful work. Same with a good many primary sources. No, hype is not a bad thing. It does however obscure the way in which one selects a good from mediocre book. Is After Finitude a good book? Yes, but why? It’s goodness isn’t due to originality of the argument (others have argued similar things about the contingency of reality). Is it the polemical nature of the book? I don’t know what it is.
That said, I didn’t mean to suggest that those who are quite taken with speculative realism are overly optimistic about its potential to save us all. That may in fact be the case or it may not, but it wasn’t something I was commenting on. I don’t share in the optimism of your presentation of Open Publishing. Yes, there are some serious problems in the publishing world and, largely in the name of self-preservation, publishing houses have abused their authors and readerships. I’m distrustful of turning to the names people who will stake their reputation on how good they pick ’em. What you seem to be suggesting is a kind of system akin to the early years of Rock N Roll when a few producers knew how to pick them and that was supported by sales. I am not accusing you of putting everything on the business model, I recognize that you think these things will be born out by the amount of readers these books get and that’s how we will know if they’re good (or at least that’s what I’ve taken you to be saying). Yet, if we accept that sometimes good books go unread or that bad books get hyped, then this system isn’t nearly so revolutionary. It merely opens up the system to more competitors, but doesn’t appear to change the logic.
Perhaps you thought I was ordering a larger meal than what i was. It was never my intention to say you were wrong, I was expressing some misgivings about stuff on the edges of all this. I welcome the new series and hope it provides new ideas to consider and engage with. It may have the also benefit of ending the endless Analytic-envy and whinging about doing original work, though it may in fact be that few of these types can do original work. If you go into a Parisian bookstore you’ll see that, really, only a few holders of French passports can either. The majority of contemporary works lining the wall are secondary sources.
To end, some recent books written in English (there are good many French thinkers that I think should have more popularity than they do too) in a variety of fields (from philosophy of religion, phenomenology, aesthetics, metaphysics, and politics) that I consider to have been as good or better than the majority of stuff out there, but were not read (though none of them are Husserl commentaries). I should also say I consider all of these to fit your criteria of primary source. Peter Steeves’ The Things Themselves, Philip Goodchild’s Capitalism and Religion and his Theology of Money, Bill Martin’s Ethical Marxism, though the man is much maligned (and perhaps understandably so) David Krell’s The Tragic Absolute was very good, John Mullarkey’s two most recent books (Post-Continental Philosophy and Refractions of Realty). I think what they lack, and this probably says something about our cognition of thought, is some kind of branding with which to think through them.
I seem to be late to this conversation, but I personally like both formats – for example, I have Cambridge edition of Kant’s Notes both as a book which allows me to read it and as a PDF (found accidentally online) which allows me to search it for keyword, print pages of it out, enlarge, copy and paste and all that wonderful stuff – I think it would be great if when buying a book say on amazon.com I could get a searchable PDF online (no need for index then)…
I have come very late to this conversation. I am editing a popular independent news and arts website. The content isn’t entirely suited to me as a philosopher, but I am staying with it as it offers genuine opportunity for the usual format of making and receiving writing and art to be pursued. At the moment we are in a transitional phase, working towards becoming a huge art and writing sharing platform.
Addtionally, I have been thinking of ways of messing with the format of writing itself… one thing that has come to mind is some system of bookmarking which allows for texts to be snappy and to the point, whilst enabling readers to store up footnotes in some kind of ‘intellectual trolley’, to be looked over later.
I think in this way, or, indeed, in quite different ways, that writing, both philosophical and not, may change not merely in a linear way, but may be pushed outwards, way beyond even the capacity we have to ‘link’ between pages.
Good luck Graham on pursuing this.
sorry where i say to be pursued, i mean, ‘to be reviewed’
I was amazed when I first read Ruyer’s Neo-Finalisme -some great drawings in it trying to convey the concept of survol absolue. Absolute Survey.
But I’m not convinced of the value of translating the whole thing…..Abs. survey was his most impt. intuition but there are other traditions that might have more to offer in this respect.
That’s definitely a good point Paul. I guess I must admit that I have a particular interest in this notion and this book….
One of the reasons being this concept of survol….Deleuze uses it throughout his writings, more often than I first realized, up until What Is Philosophy?
In any case, Laruelle’s Response to Deleuze played up this concept a lot, and Laruelle attacks Deleuze for it…but I didn’t make the connection with Ruyer until I reread Neo-finalisme and got a better grasp of it…also, your essay in A Shock to Thought helped pulled everything together.
While that’s not the only reason I’d like to work on it, I feel like this intermediary between Laruelle and Deleuze needs to stand out more clearly if Laruelle’s critique is going to stand any interrogation as to its validity. Definitely not a reason to translate Ruyer per se…..are there any other works of ‘metaphysics’ you would like to see translated instead?
funny, don’t seem to be getting ‘comment notification’ but I am subsribed.
Just noticed this comment.
I am trying to get Stengers most recent work translated thru Palgrave – I think it’s happening. (I believe they have a new bio of Guattari trans by Stivale and ?).
Andy Goffey would do the trans. It’s a book called ‘La Sorcellerie Capitaliste.’ Not really ‘metaphysics – there is now also a sequel called “Au temps des catastrophes: comment resister a la barbarie qui vient.’
Apart from that there is the Argentinian/German neurobiological school.
I mention it in the concl. to Primacy of Semiosis. But that is not so much a question of translation as editing – and depends on the author/s who I am in contact with.
You might be interested in these links to Stengers:
http://www.europhilosophie.eu/recherche/IMG/doc/Stengers.doc
http://jeancletmartin.blog.fr/tags/stengers-isabelle/
And for the Argentinian tradition try
http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/a_palindrome.htm
forgot to say I am not near a uni and have limited access to books so don’t keep up with the lit.
I was never a deleuzian scholar but I do think the concept of abs immanence is inspired by abs survol – in WIP you can see the affinity.
I think the argentinian school has a more nuanced understanding of there being no ‘gap’ – they would say that we are at ‘causally zero distance’ from ourselves…no mediation. anyway that’s enuf from me today.
On a side note: unrelated really but it’s late:
“Ultimately, I would expect that we will dispense with hard copies altogether, though that will be decided at a higher level than series editor. Soon everyone will have Kindle-type devices for at least a certain percentage of their reading. And hard copies eventually won’t be needed to convince tenure and promotion committees that we’re talking about legitimate books and not just PDF’s randomly posted on the web.”
Actually no. The problem is that the purely electronic model of publishing is not sustainable. The very reason why book publishing is necessary is because it is a relatively robust technology – whereas this computer I’m typing on is one of the most environmentally unfriendly mass consumptive objects ever created. The kindle device referred to above is possibly even more destructive.
The life cycle of an object is critical. Thanks for the argentinian pointers.