Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, No. 1-4 (2006-2008)
Filed under journal | Tags: · aesthetics, horror, mathematics, philosophy, politics, science, speculative realism, theology
Collapse Vol. IV: Concept Horror
May 2008
Collapse IV features a series of investigations by philosophers, writers and artists into Concept Horror. Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. This unique volume continues Collapse’s pursuit of indisciplinary miscegenation, the wide-ranging contributions interacting to produce common themes and suggestive connections. In the process a rich and compelling case emerges for the intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought.
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-3-4
403 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Collapse Vol. III: Unknown Deleuze [+ Speculative Realism]
November 2007
Collapse III contains explorations of the work of Gilles Deleuze by pioneering thinkers in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, music and architecture. In addition, we publish in this volume two previously untranslated texts by Deleuze himself, along with a fascinating piece of vintage science fiction from one of his more obscure influences. Finally, as an annex to Collapse Volume II, we also include a full transcription of the conference on ‘Speculative Realism’ held in London in 2007.
The contributors to this volume aim to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, Deleuze’s contribution to philosophy: in what does his philosophical originality lie; what does he appropriate from other philosophers and how does he transform it? And how can the apparently disparate threads of his work to be ‘integrated’ – what is the precise nature of the constellation of the aesthetic, the conceptual and the political proposed by Gilles Deleuze, and what are the overarching problems in which the numerous philosophical concepts ‘signed Deleuze’ converge?
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Dustin McWherter
ISBN 978-0-9553087-2-7
458 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Collapse Vol. II: Speculative Realism
March 2007
Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, and involving them in unforeseen and productive syntheses, Collapse II features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and cinéastes, and searching interviews with leading scientists.
Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics – the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its “end”, the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency – both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-1-2
330 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Collapse Vol. I: Numerical Materialism
September 2006
Collapse I is an unprecedented collection of work by leading practitioners in diverse fields of enquiry. Conceived as a meticulously compiled and compendious miscellany, a grimoire or instruction manual without referent, as a delirious carnival of sobriety, Collapse operates its war against good sense not through romantic flight but through the formal insanity secreted in the depths of the rational (“the rational is not reasonable”).
Collapse aims to force unforeseen conjunctions, singular correspondences, and unnatural cross-fertilisations; to diagram abstract regions as yet unnamed.
The first volume of Collapse investigates the nature and philosophical uses of number through interviews with philosophers scientists and mathematicians, essays on the mathematics of intensity, terrorism, the occult and information theory, and graphical works of multiplicity.
Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editors: Ray Brassier, Michael Carr
ISBN 978-0-9553087-0-4
288 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)
Comment (0)Slavoj Žižek: Living in the End Times (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · apartheid, biotechnology, capitalism, communism, ecology, financial crisis, genetics, intellectual property, philosophy, political economy
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.
After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Zizek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Zizek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.
Publisher Verso, 2010
ISBN 184467598X, 9781844675982
Length 416 pages
PDF (no OCR; updated on 2012-4-15)
Comment (0)Jon May, Nigel Thrift (eds.): Timespace. Geographies of Temporality (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · actor-network theory, anthropology, buddhism, cultural geography, cultural studies, feminism, media studies, postmodern, psychology, sociology, time
Timespace undermines the old certainties of time and space by arguing that these dimensions do not exist singly, but only as a hybrid process term. The issue of space has perhaps been over-emphasised and it is essential that processes of everyday existence, such as globalisation and environmental issues and also notions such as gender, race and ethnicity, are looked at with a balanced time-space analysis.
The social and cultural consequences of this move are traced through a series of studies which deploy different perspectives – structural, phenomenological and even Buddhist – in order to make things meet up. The contributors provide an overview of the history of time and introduce the concepts of time and space together, across a range of disciplines. The themes discussed are of importance for cultural geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and psychology.
Publisher Routledge, 2001
Volume 13 of Critical geographies
ISBN 0415180848, 9780415180849
323 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-14)
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