Edgar Morin: Method, vol. 1: The Nature of Nature (1977–) [PT, EN, ES]

“Method: The Nature of Nature is the first of several volumes exposing Edgar Morin’s general systems view on life and society. The present volume maintains that the organization of all life and society necessitates the simultaneous interplay of order and disorder. All systems, physical, biological, social, political and informational, incessantly reshape part and whole through feedback, thereby generating increasingly complex systems. For continued evolution, these simultaneously complementary, concurrent, and antagonistic systems require a priority of love over truth, of subject over object, of Sy-bernetics over cybernetics.”

First published in French as La Méthode, t. 1: La Nature de la nature, 1977.

English edition
Translated and Introduced by J.L. Roland Bélanger
Publisher Peter Lang, 1992
ISBN 0820418781
435 pages

Interview with Morin by his translator Ana Sánchez, 2011
Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (EN)

O método 1. A natureza da natureza (Portuguese, trans. Maria Gabriela de Bragança, 2nd ed., c1987, 12 MB)
Method, 1: The Nature of Nature (English, trans. J.L. Roland Bélanger, 1992, 17 MB)
El método 1. La naturaleza de la naturaleza (Spanish, trans. Ana Sánchez and Dora Sánchez García, 2001, 4 MB)

The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia (2014–) [EN/DE]

A glossary of 80 selected terms associated with the notion of the Anthropocene. Each entry is accompanied by numerous videos of talks and discussions held during The Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in 2013-2014.

“Forensics and cybernetics, climate crimes and neo-ecology, scopic systems, prosthesis, fossils, beauty, or the obscene. The Anthropocene Project’s core terminology appears incomprehensible and impenetrable at first. The encyclopedia, currently under development as an online presentation at büro eta boeklund, is dedicated to this vocabulary. It offers sidelong glances that can help to illuminate the jungle of discourse and show the beauty of the Anthropocene Project’s terminology in a clear and easily understandable fashion. Like every system of classification, this project calls into question our world’s unspoken habits when it comes to categorization.”

View online in English or German.

W. J. T. Mitchell, Mark B. N. Hansen (eds.): Critical Terms for Media Studies (2010)

“Part of a larger conversation that engages culture, technology, and politics, this collection of essays explores critical language for dealing with the qualities and modes of contemporary media. The essays, commissioned expressly for this volume, are organized into three interrelated groups: “Aesthetics” engages with terms that describe sensory experiences and judgments, “Technology” offers entry into a broad array of technological concepts, and “Society” opens up language describing the systems that allow a medium to function.”

Contributors: Johanna Drucker (Art), Bernadette Wegenstein (Body), Bill Brown (Materiality), Bernard Stiegler (Memory), Caroline Jones (Senses), Eugene Thacker (Biomedia), Bruce Clarke (Communication, Information), N. Katherine Hayles (Cybernetics), Geoffrey Winthrop-Young (Hardware / Software / Wetware), John Johnston (Technology), David Graeber (Exchange), Cary Wolfe (Language), Peter Goodrich (Law), John Durham Peters (Mass Media), Alexander R. Galloway (Networks), David Wellbery (Systems), Lydia H. Liu (Writing), and W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen (Image, Time and Space, New Media).

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2010
ISBN 0226532666, 9780226532660
376 pages

Publisher

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