Gabriel Tarde: Monadology and Sociology (1893/2012)

Gabriel Tarde’s Monadology and Sociology, originally published in 1893, is a remarkable and unclassifiable book. It sets out a theory of ‘universal sociology’, which aims to explicate the essentially social nature of all phenomena, including the behaviour of atoms, stars, chemical substances and living beings. He argues that all of nature consists of elements animated by belief and desire, which form social aggregates analogous to those of human societies and institutions. In developing this central insight, Tarde outlines a metaphysical system which builds on both classical rationalist philosophy and the latest scientific theories of the time, in a speculative synthesis of extraordinary range and power.

Tarde’s work has only recently returned to prominence after a long eclipse. His work was an important influence on later theorists including Deleuze and Latour, and has been widely discussed in the social sciences, but has rarely been a focus of philosophical interest. The translator’s afterword provides an explication of the key ideas in the text and situates Tarde’s theory within the context of the philosophical tradition, arguing for the importance of the text as a highly original work of systematic ontology, and for its importance for contemporary theoretical debates.

Originally published as Monadologie et Sociologie in Essais et melanges sociologiques, Lyon, A.Storck / Paris, G. Masson, pp 309-389, 1895; which is a reworked and expanded version of an article published in 1893 as ‘Monads and Social Science’ (‘Les Monades et la Science Sociale’), Revue Internationale de Sociologie, vol. 1, no. 2, pp 157-173 and vol. 1, no. 3, pp 231-246.
Edited and translated by Theo Lorenc, with afterword and notes
Publisher Re.press, Melbourne, January 2012
Transmission series
ISBN: 978-0-9808197-2-4
Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA 3.0
105 pages

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Fibreculture journal 19: Ubiquity (2011)

Fibreculture Journal 19 deals with ubiquitous or pervasive computing, and with the recently emerged ambience of information. The issue details practices involving pervasive computing, both everyday practices and new art or dynamic architectural forms. Alongside these more practical concerns, the issue thinks through and with ubiquity. It takes ubiquity as something that has already arrived, something of immediate and increasing power. Simply put, ubiquity, by nature, is something with which we more often have to negotiate. Ubiquity’s ambiguous powers and possible futures also become key concerns. Finally, several articles consider the way that ubiquity might lead us to reconsider not only our past relationship to computing, but perhaps the very nature of computing and the human, vis a vis each other.

Articles include: Ulrik Ekman’s comprehensive introduction to the issues and ideas that move through ubiquity; Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech’s ‘Embedding response: self production as a model for an actuated architecture’; Anders Michelsen’s ‘ Pervasive Computing and Prosopopoietic Modelling: Notes on computed function and creative action’; Simon Penny’s ‘ Towards a Performative Aesthetics of Interactivity’; Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Pold’s ‘The Scripted Spaces of Urban Ubiquitous Computing: The experience, poetics, and politics of public scripted space’; Bo Kampmann Walther’s ‘Reflections on the Philosophy of Pervasive Gaming: With Special Emphasis on Rules, Gameplay, and Virtuality’; Matthew Fuller and Sónia Matos’ ‘Feral Computing: From Ubiquitous Calculation to Wild Interactions’; Malcolm McCullough’s ‘Toward Environmental Criticism’; Jonas Fritsch’s ‘Affective Experience in Interactive Environments’.

Issue edited by Ulrik Ekman
Publisher: Fibreculture Publications/The Open Humanities Press, Sydney, Australia, December 2011
ISSN: 1449 – 1443

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Simon Reynolds: Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (2011)

We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band reformations and reunion tours, revivals and reissues, remakes and mash-ups … Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival resources of rock history have been exhausted? What happens when we run out of past?

Simon Reynolds, one of the finest music writers of his generation, argues that we have reached a tipping point. Earlier eras had their own obsessions with antiquity, but never before has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past.

Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own era?

Publisher Faber & Faber, 2011
ISBN 0865479941, 9780865479944
458 pages

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