Marysia Lewandowska, Laurel Ptak (eds.): Undoing Property? (2013)

“Undoing Property? examines complex relationships inside art, culture, political economy, immaterial production, and the public realm today. In its pages artists and theorists address aspects of computing, curating, economy, ecology, gentrification, music, publishing, piracy, and much more.

Property shapes all social relations. Its invisible lines force separations and create power relations felt through the unequal distribution of what is otherwise collectively produced value. Over the last few years the precise question of what should be privately owned and public­ly shared in society has animated intense political struggles and social movements around the world. In this shadow the publication’s critical texts, interviews and artistic interventions offer models of practice and interrogate diverse sites, from the body, to the courtroom, to the server, to the museum. The book asks why propertization itself has changed so fundamentally over the last few decades and what might be done to challenge it. The “undoing” of Undoing Property? begins with the recognition that something else is possible.”

With contributions by Agency, David Berry, Nils Bohlin, Sean Dockray, Rasmus Fleischer, Antonia Hirsch, David Horvitz, Mattin, Open Music Archive, Matteo Pasquinelli, Claire Pentecost, Florian Schneider, Matthew Stadler, Marilyn Strathern, Kuba Szreder, Marina Vishmidt; preface by Binna Choi, Maria Lind, Emily Pethick

Publisher Sternberg Press, Berlin, and Tensta konsthall, Stockholm, 2013
ISBN 9783943365689
256 pages
via Matteo Pasquinelli

Publisher (Sternberg)
Publisher (Tensta konsthall)

PDF, PDF, PDF (12 MB, updated on 2018-6-22)
Git repository (containing templates and design, added on 2017-12-20)

Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont: Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Abuse of Science (1997–) [FR, EN, ES, IT, RU, TR, PL]

When Intellectual Impostures was published in France, it sent shock waves through the Left Bank establishment. When it was published in Britain, it provoked vicious debate. Sokal and Bricmont examine the canon of French postmodernists – Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Latour, Virilio, Deleuze and Guattari – and systematically expose their abuse of science.

French edition
Publisher Odile Jacob, Paris, 1997
413 pages

English edition
Publisher Profile Books, 1998
ISBN 1861970749, 9781861970749
274 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

Impostures intellectuelles (French, 2nd Edition, 1997, DJVU)
Intellectual Impostures (English, 1998/99, EPUB), MOBI.
Fashionable Nonsense (English, 1998)
Imposturas intelectuales (Spanish, trans. Joan Caries Guix Vilaplana, 1999)
Imposture intellettuali (Italian, trans. Fabio Acerbi and Monica Ugaglia, 1999, added on 2014-10-24)
Интеллектуальные уловки. Критика современной философии постмодерна (Russian, 2002), HTML
Son moda saçmalıklar: Postmodern aydınların bilimi kötüye kullanmaları (Turkish, trans. Mehmet Baydur and Ongun Onaran, 2002)
Modne bzdury: O nadużywaniu pojęć z zakresu nauk ścisłych przez postmodernistycznych intelektualistów (Polish, trans. Piotr Amsterdamski, 2004)

See also:
Mara Beller, “The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?” (published in Physics Today, September 1998, pp 29-34)

François Cusset: French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States (2003–) [FR, EN]

“During the last three decades of the twentieth century, a disparate group of radical French thinkers achieved an improbable level of influence and fame in the United States. Compared by at least one journalist to the British rock ‘n’ roll invasion, the arrival of works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari on American shores in the late 1970s and 1980s caused a sensation.

Outside the academy, “French theory” had a profound impact on the era’s emerging identity politics while also becoming, in the 1980s, the target of right-wing propagandists. At the same time in academic departments across the country, their poststructuralist form of radical suspicion transformed disciplines from literature to anthropology to architecture. By the 1990s, French theory was woven deeply into America’s cultural and intellectual fabric.

French Theory is the first comprehensive account of the American fortunes of these unlikely philosophical celebrities. François Cusset looks at why America proved to be such fertile ground for French theory, how such demanding writings could become so widely influential, and the peculiarly American readings of these works. Reveling in the gossipy history, Cusset also provides a lively exploration of the many provocative critical practices inspired by French theory. Ultimately, he dares to shine a bright light on the exultation of these thinkers to assess the relevance of critical theory to social and political activism today—showing, finally, how French theory has become inextricably bound with American life.”

Publisher La Découverte, Paris, 2003
ISBN 2707146730
373 pages

English edition
Translated by Jeff Fort, With Josephine Berganza and Marlon Jones
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816647321, 9780816647323
388 pages

Reviews: Jennifer Ferng (Leonardo), Juliet J. Fall (Foucault Studies), Ethan Kleinberg (NPDR), Bridie Lonie (Junctures, FR).

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

French Theory: Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux États-Unis. (French)
French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. (English)