Ray Brassier: Alien Theory: The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter (2001)

“The thesis tries to define and explain the rudiments of a ‘non-philosophical’ or ‘non-decisional’ theory of materialism on the basis of a theoretical framework provided by the ‘non-philosophy’ of François Laruelle. Neither anti-philosophical nor anti-materialist in character, non-materialism tries to construct a rigorously transcendental theory of matter by using certain instances of philosophical materialism as its source material.

The materialist decision to identify the real with matter is seen to retain a structural isomorphy with the phenomenological decision to identify the real with the phenomenon. Both decisions are shown to operate on the basis of a methodological idealism:- materialism on account of its confusion of matter and concept; phenomenology by virtue of its confusion of phenomenon and logos. By dissolving the respectively ‘materiological’ and ‘phenomenological’ amphibolies which are the result of the failure to effect a rigorously transcendental separation between matter and concept on the one hand, and between phenomenon and logos on the other, non-materialist theory proposes to mobilise the non-hybrid or non-decisional concepts of a ‘matter-without-concept’ and of a ‘phenomenon-without-logos’ in order to effect a unified but non-unitary theory of phenomenology and materialism. The result is a materialisation of thinking that operates according to matter’s foreclosure to decision. That is to say, a transcendental theory of the phenomenon, licensing limitless phenomenological plasticity, unconstrained by the apparatus of eidetic intuition or any horizon of apophantic disclosure;- but one which is simultaneously a transcendental theory of matter, uncontaminated by the bounds of empirical perception and free of all phenomenological circumscription.” (Synopsis)

Doctoral Thesis
Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, April 2001
241 pages

discussion (Levi R. Bryant)

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Henri Lefebvre: State, Space, World: Selected Essays (2009)

“One of the most influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre pioneered the study of the modern state in an age of accelerating global economic integration and fragmentation. Shortly after the 1974 publication of his landmark book The Production of Space, Lefebvre embarked on one of the most ambitious projects of his career: a consideration of the history and geographies of the modern state through a monumental study that linked several disciplines, including political science, sociology, geography, and history.

State, Space, World collects a series of Lefebvre’s key writings on the state from this period. Making available in English for the first time the as-yet-unexplored political aspect of Lefebvre’s work, it contains essays on philosophy, political theory, state formation, spatial planning, and globalization, as well as provocative reflections on the possibilities and limits of grassroots democracy under advanced capitalism.

State, Space, World is an essential complement to The Production of Space, The Urban Revolution, and The Critique of Everyday Life. Lefebvre’s original and prescient analyses that emerge in this volume are urgently relevant to contemporary debates on globalization and neoliberal capitalism.”

Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden
Translated by Gerald Moore, Neil Brenner, and Stuart Elden
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 081665316X, 9780816653164
330 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2020-7-31)

Tiqqun: Grundbausteine einer Theorie des Jungen-Mädchens (1999/2009) [German]

“Das Junge-Mädchen (la Jeune-Fille) ist die Gestalt, die Ewig-Weibliches und ewige Jugend in sich vereint. Seinen Ursprung hat es im Bankrott des von der totalen Kommerzialisierung überrannten Feminismus. Einzig fähig zu konsumieren (sowohl in der Freizeit wie bei der Arbeit), ist das Junge-Mädchen zugleich das luxuriöseste Konsumgut, das gegenwärtig in Umlauf ist: die Leit-Ware, die dazu dient, alle anderen zu verkaufen. Mit dem Junge-Mädchen wird Wirklichkeit, was sich nur die überdrehtesten Krämerseelen erträumten: die autonome Ware, die spricht und geht, die lebende Sache.

Doch woran erkennt man es? Zunächst daran, dass es ist, was es zu sein scheint, sonst nichts. Zum zweiten hat alles, was das Junge-Mädchen tut, etwas Professionelles an sich, da es seine gesamte Existenz als eine Frage des Managements betrachtet. Als Eigentümerin ihres Körpers, verkauft das Junge-Mädchen (»Sternchen«, Model, Reklame, Bild) seine »Verführungskraft« wie man einst seine »Arbeitskraft« verkaufte. Selbst seine Liebschaften sind Arbeit, und wie jede Arbeit prekär… Schließlich altert das Junge-Mädchen nicht, es verwest.”

„Julien Coupat und seine Freunde können nicht die Autoren der in TIQQUN veröffentlichten Texte sein, weil diese in einer Zone angesiedelt sind, in der es unmöglich ist, zwischen Subjekt und Dispositiv zu unterscheiden, d.h. in der der Begriff des Autors jegliche Bedeutung verloren hat.“

Der Text ist in seiner ersten Version in der Nummer 1 von Tiqqun im Januar 1999 erschienen. Die vorliegende Übersetzung folgt der überarbeiteten Fassung in: TIQQUN, Premiers matériaux pour une théorie de la Jeune-Fille, Rennes 2006.
Übersetzt von Deutsche Sektion der PI (Parti Imaginaire)
Merve Verlag, 2009
IMD 334
ISBN 3883962716, 9783883962719
120 Seiten

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French edition (2001)
English edition (2010)