Thinking Nature, 1 (2011)

A Journal on the Concept of Nature

Edited by Timothy Morton and Ben Woodard
Published in June 2011

View online (PDF and Issuu.com articles)

Eugene Thacker: After Life (2010)

Life is one of our most basic concepts, and yet when examined directly it proves remarkably contradictory and elusive, encompassing both the broadest and the most specific phenomena. We can see this uncertainty about life in our habit of approaching it as something at once scientific and mystical, in the return of vitalisms of all types, and in the pervasive politicization of life. In short, life seems everywhere at stake and yet is nowhere the same.

In After Life, Eugene Thacker clears the ground for a new philosophy of life by recovering the twists and turns in its philosophical history. Beginning with Aristotle’s originary formulation of a philosophy of life, Thacker examines the influence of Aristotle’s ideas in medieval and early modern thought, leading him to the work of Immanuel Kant, who notes the inherently contradictory nature of “life in itself.” Along the way, Thacker shows how early modern philosophy’s engagement with the problem of life affects thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Georges Bataille, and Alain Badiou, as well as contemporary developments in the “speculative turn” in philosophy.

At a time when life is categorized, measured, and exploited in a variety of ways, After Life invites us to delve deeper into the contours and contradictions of the age-old question, “what is life?”

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2010
ISBN 0226793729, 9780226793726
312 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)

The Machinery of Stability Preservation (2011) [Chinese/English]

“There is widespread agreement in China, from high officials to ordinary people, about the importance of maintaining social stability. There is rather less consensus, though, about how best to ensure and promote stability. Considering the costs, both fiscal and human, of continued pursuit of the policy of “stability above all else,” some have begun to question whether, perhaps, the effort might actually be counterproductive.

In a recent article (translated below) posted on the website of Caijing magazine, two reporters who have been covering China’s social stability problem offer an excellent introduction to the organizational structure behind China’s stability management effort. Their detailed portrait of this structure as it exists at both the central and local levels leads into a trenchant analysis of China’s paradoxical pursuit of stability and a look at how that structure actually undermines that effort. Their conclusion—that the only escape from this paradox is to accelerate the pace of political and judicial reform—is a clear articulation of an aspiration that is gathering momentum in China but that will still have to overcome much resistance if it is to be realized.”

by Caijing magazine reporters Xu Kai & Li Weiao, 6 June 2011
Translated by Dui Hua Human Rights Journal, 8 June 2011

View online [Chinese]
View online [English]

related:
Stability Preservation in China (English extracts from three pieces written by Leung Man Tao, a recognized media professional and public intellectual from Hong Kong, Du Guang, a veteran Central Party School scholar, and Sun Liping, a sociology professor at Tsinghua University; 2010)
Riot erupts in southwest China town: reports (Reuters; 12 Aug 2011)