Speculations. Journal of Speculative Realism, No. 2 (2011)

Speculations is a journal dedicated to research into speculative realism and post-continental philosophy. Our aim is to facilitate discussion about ongoing developments within these emerging movements and related disciplines. The journal is open access and peer-reviewed.

Edited by Michael Austin, Paul J. Ennis, Fabio Gironi, Thomas Gokey
Published in May 2011
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license
ISBN 978-1-257-65407-9

Authors

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Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975/1987)

This is one of the most original and important works of contemporary European thought. First published in France in 1975, it is the major theoretical work of one of the foremost thinkers in Europe.

Castoriadis offers a brilliant and far-reaching analysis of the unique character of the social-historical world and its relations to the individual, to language and to nature. He argues that the most traditional conceptions of society and history overlook the essential feature of the social-historical world, namely that this world is not articulated once and for all but is in each case the creation of the society concerned. In emphasizing the element of creativity, Castoriadis opens the way for rethinking political theory and practice in terms of the autonomous and explicit self-institution of society.

Castoriadis’ wide-ranging discussion deals with many issues which are currently topical in the English-speaking world: the critique of Marxism; the creative and imaginary character of language; the relations between action and social institutions; the nature of the unconscious and the reappraisal of psychoanalysis; and the role of symbolism on both the individual and the social levels. This book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with social and political theory and contemporary European thought.

First published as L’institution imaginaire de la société, by Les Editions du Seuil.
This English translation first published 1987 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Translated by Kathleen Blamey
Publisher Polity Press, May 1997
Reprinted 2005
ISBN: 9780745619507, 0745619509
448 pages

publisher

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Gilles Deleuze: Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974 (2002/2004)

“‘One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian,’ Michel Foucault once wrote. This book anthologizes 40 texts and interviews written over 20 years by renowned French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who died in 1995. The early texts, from 1953-1966 (on Rousseau, Kafka, Jarry, etc.), belong to literary criticism and announce Deleuze’s last book, Critique and Clinic (1993). But philosophy clearly predominates in the rest of the book, with sharp appraisals of the thinkers he always felt indebted to: Spinoza, Bergson. More surprising is his acknowledgement of Jean-Paul Sartre as his master. ‘The new themes, a certain new style, a new aggressive and polemical way of raising questions,’ he wrote, ‘come from Sartre.’ But the figure of Nietzsche remains by far the most seminal, and the presence throughout of his friends and close collaborators, Felix Guattari and Michel Foucault. The book stops shortly after the publication of Anti-Oedipus, and presents a kind of genealogy of Deleuze’s thought as well as his attempt to leave philosophy and connect it to the outside—but, he cautions, as a philosopher.”

Originally published by Les editions de Minuit, Paris, 2002.

Edited by David Lapoujade
Translated by Mike Taormina
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2004
Foreign Agents series
ISBN 1584350180, 9781584350187
323 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-6-26)