François Laruelle: The Concept of Non-Photography (2011) [English]

Myriads of negatives tell of the world, speaking among themselves, constituting a vast conversation, filling a photosphere that is located nowhere. But one single photo is enough to express the real that all photographers aspire one day to capture, without ever quite succeeding in doing so. Nevertheless, this real cohabits intimately with negatives, with clichés as embedded in our lives as they are imperceptible. Photographs are the thousand flat facets of an ungraspable identity that only shines – and sometimes very faintly – through something else. What more is there to a photo than a curious and prurient glance? And yet it is also a fascinating secret.

The Concept of Non-Photography develops a rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to science, philosophy and art, and introduces the reader to all of the key concepts of Laruelle’s ‘non-philosophy’.

Translated from French by Robin Mackay
Publisher Urbanomic, United Kingdom, and Sequence Press, New York, 2011
ISBN 0983216916, 9780983216919
143 pages

review (Catherine Kron, DisMagazine)

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Alexander Galloway: French Theory Today: An Introduction to Possible Futures (2011)

“This set of five pamphlets documents a seminar given recently by Alexander R. Galloway at the Public School New York, a self-organizing educational program where class ideas are generated by the public. French Theory Today explores a new generation of French voices—Catherine Malabou, Bernard Stiegler, Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, Quentin Meillassoux, and François Laruelle—whose work has, to varying degrees, only recently emerged in the English-speaking world. Each night of the seminar consisted of a lecture followed by questions from and discussion with class participants. As Galloway suggests in the online class proposal, the goal was ‘not to set in aspic a new canon for French philosophy, but to proceed inductively, tracing some recent experiments and possible futures.'”

Pamphlet 1 | Catherine Malabou, or The Commerce in Being
Pamphlet 2 | Bernard Stiegler, or Our Thoughts are With Control
Pamphlet 3 | Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, or Unworkability
Pamphlet 4 | Quentin Meillassoux, or The Great Outdoors
Pamphlet 5 | François Laruelle, or The Secret

Each pamphlet includes the texts of the lectures, plus transcriptions of the Q&A, as well as special responses and contributions from Nicola Masciandaro, Eugene Thacker, Dominic Pettman, Jackson Moore, Stephen Squibb, Prudence Whittlesey, Taeyoon Choi, and David Horvitz.

Publisher The Public School New York/Erudio Editions, 2011

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François Laruelle: Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy (1986/2010)

A crucial text in the development of François Laruelle’s oeuvre and an excellent starting point for understanding his broader project, Philosophies of Difference offers a theoretical and critical analysis of the philosophers of difference after Hegel and Nietzsche. Laruelle then uses this analysis to introduce a new theoretical practice of non-philosophical thought.

Rather than presenting a narrative historical overview, Laruelle provides a series of rigorous critiques of the various interpretations of difference in Hegel, Nietzsche and Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida. From Laruelle’s innovative theoretical perspective, the forms of philosophical difference that emerge appear as variations upon a unique, highly abstract structure of philosophical decision, the self-posing and self-legitimating essence of philosophy itself. Reconceived in terms of philosophical decision, the seemingly radical concept of philosophical difference is shown to configure rather the identity of philosophy as such, which thus becomes manifest as a contingent and no longer absolute form of thinking. The way is thereby opened for initiating a new form of thought, anticipated here with the development of a key notion of non-philosophy, the Vision-in-One.

Originally published in French as Les philosophies de la difference Univeritaires de France, 1986
Translated by Rocco Gangle
Publisher Continuum Intl Pub Group, 2010
ISBN 0826436633, 9780826436634
228 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-26)