Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel (eds.): Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005)

“In this editorial and curatorial project, more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers rethink what politics is about. In a time of political turmoil and anticlimax, this book redefines politics as operating in the realm of things. Politics is not just an arena, a profession, or a system, but a concern for things brought to the attention of the fluid and expansive constituency of the public. But how are things made public? What, we might ask, is a republic, a res publica, a public thing, if we do not know how to make things public? There are many other kinds of assemblies, which are not political in the usual sense, that gather a public around things—scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches, and disputes involving natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. The authors of Making Things Public—and the ZKM show that the book accompanies—ask what would happen if politics revolved around disputed things. Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions—technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public. They show us that the old definition of politics is too narrow; there are many techniques of representation—in politics, science, and art—of which Parliaments and Congresses are only a part.”

The authors include Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, Richard Powers, Lorraine Daston, Richard Aczel, and Donna Haraway; their writings are accompanied by excerpts from John Dewey, Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. More than 500 color images document the new idea of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an “object-oriented democracy.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262122790, 9780262122795
1072 pages

Review: Anthony Iles (Mute).

Publisher

PDF (82 MB, updated on 2020-7-13)

Niklas Luhmann: Ecological Communication (1986–) [DE, EN]

“This work by Niklas Luhmann further develops the theories of the author by offering a challenging analysis of the relationship between society and the environment.

Luhmann extends the concept of ‘ecology’ to refer to any analysis that looks at connections between social systems and the surrounding environment. He traces the development of the notion of ‘environment’ from the medieval idea—which encompasses both human and natural systems—to our modern definition, which separates social systems from the external environment.

In Luhmann’s thought, human beings form part of the environment, while social systems consist only of communications. Utilizing this distinctive theoretical perspective, Luhmann presents a comprehensive catalog of society’s reactions to environmental problems. He investigates the spheres of the economy, law, science, politics, religion, and education to show how these areas relate to environmental issues.”

Publisher Westdeutsches Verlag, Opladen, 1986
4th edition published by VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften/GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden, 2004
ISBN 3531517759
275 pages

English edition
Translated by John Bednarz, Jr.
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 1989
ISBN 0226496511, 9780226496511
187 pages

Ökologische Kommunikation. Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf ökologische Gefährdungen einstellen? (German, 4th ed., 1986/2004, updated on 2012-7-17)
Ecological Communication (English, 1989, no OCR, updated on 2012-7-17)

Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development, No. 1-4 (2006-2008)

Collapse Vol. IV: Concept Horror
May 2008

Collapse IV features a series of investigations by philosophers, writers and artists into Concept Horror. Contributors address the existential, aesthetic, theological and political dimensions of horror, interrogate its peculiar affinity with philosophical thought, and uncover the horrors that may lie in wait for those who pursue rational thought beyond the bounds of the reasonable. This unique volume continues Collapse’s pursuit of indisciplinary miscegenation, the wide-ranging contributions interacting to produce common themes and suggestive connections. In the process a rich and compelling case emerges for the intimate bond between horror and philosophical thought.

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-3-4
403 pages

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Collapse Vol. III: Unknown Deleuze [+ Speculative Realism]
November 2007

Collapse III contains explorations of the work of Gilles Deleuze by pioneering thinkers in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, music and architecture. In addition, we publish in this volume two previously untranslated texts by Deleuze himself, along with a fascinating piece of vintage science fiction from one of his more obscure influences. Finally, as an annex to Collapse Volume II, we also include a full transcription of the conference on ‘Speculative Realism’ held in London in 2007.

The contributors to this volume aim to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, Deleuze’s contribution to philosophy: in what does his philosophical originality lie; what does he appropriate from other philosophers and how does he transform it? And how can the apparently disparate threads of his work to be ‘integrated’ – what is the precise nature of the constellation of the aesthetic, the conceptual and the political proposed by Gilles Deleuze, and what are the overarching problems in which the numerous philosophical concepts ‘signed Deleuze’ converge?

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Dustin McWherter
ISBN 978-0-9553087-2-7
458 pages

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Collapse Vol. II: Speculative Realism
March 2007

Comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, and involving them in unforeseen and productive syntheses, Collapse II features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and cinéastes, and searching interviews with leading scientists.
Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics – the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its “end”, the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency – both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editor: Damian Veal
ISBN 978-0-9553087-1-2
330 pages

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Collapse Vol. I: Numerical Materialism
September 2006

Collapse I is an unprecedented collection of work by leading practitioners in diverse fields of enquiry. Conceived as a meticulously compiled and compendious miscellany, a grimoire or instruction manual without referent, as a delirious carnival of sobriety, Collapse operates its war against good sense not through romantic flight but through the formal insanity secreted in the depths of the rational (“the rational is not reasonable”).

Collapse aims to force unforeseen conjunctions, singular correspondences, and unnatural cross-fertilisations; to diagram abstract regions as yet unnamed.

The first volume of Collapse investigates the nature and philosophical uses of number through interviews with philosophers scientists and mathematicians, essays on the mathematics of intensity, terrorism, the occult and information theory, and graphical works of multiplicity.

Editor: Robin Mackay
Associate Editors: Ray Brassier, Michael Carr
ISBN 978-0-9553087-0-4
288 pages

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