Muriel Combes: Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (1999/2012) [French, English]

Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989), one of the most influential contemporary French philosophers, published only three works: L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (The individual and its physico-biological genesis, 1964) and L’individuation psychique et collective (Psychic and collective individuation, 1989), both drawn from his doctoral thesis, and Du mode d’existence des objets techniques (On the mode of existence of technical objects, 1958). It is this last work that brought Simondon into the public eye; as a consequence, he has been considered a “thinker of technics” and cited often in pedagogical reports on teaching technology. Yet Simondon was a philosopher whose ambitions lay in an in-depth renewal of ontology as a process of individuation–that is, how individuals come into being, persist, and transform. In this accessible yet rigorous introduction to Simondon’s work, Muriel Combes helps to bridge the gap between Simondon’s account of technics and his philosophy of individuation.

Some thinkers have found inspiration in Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, notably Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Combes’s account, first published in French in 1999, is one of the only studies of Simondon to appear in English. Combes breaks new ground, exploring an ethics and politics adequate to Simondon’s hypothesis of preindividual being, considering through the lens of transindividual philosophy what form a nonservile relation to technology might take today. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Simondon’s work.

Publisher Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1999
ISBN 2130498159, 9782130498155
via cip-idf.org

English edition
Translated, with Preface and Afterword, by Thomas LaMarre
Publisher MIT Press, 2012
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
ISBN 0262018187, 9780262018180
119 pages

Review (David Scott, NDPR, 2012)

Publisher (EN)
Google books (EN)

Simondon, Individu et collectivité: Pour une philosophie du transindividuel (French, 1999)
Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (English, trans. Thomas LaMarre, 2012)

Collectif Arc: Gilles Deleuze (1972/2005) [French]

Amorcée dés les années cinquante, l’œuvre de Gilles Deleuze a considérablement marqué la philosophie contemporaine. Ami et collaborateur de Michel Foucault ou Pierre Klossowski, il a su développer de nouveaux concepts, révolutionnant la pratique philosophique tout en s’inscrivant dans une filiation historique. Ses ouvrages comme L’Anti-Oedipe et Mille Plateaux (coécrits avec Félix Guattari) ou Logique du sens, pour ne citer que ses essais les plus diffusés, sont devenus des classiques. Sa disparition, en 1995, a laissé place à une large littérature autour de son œuvre ; ce présent volume trace une importante cartographie critique autour de Deleuze et de sa pensée.

Ce livre fait partie d’une série de rééditions augmentées (préface, postface) et corrigées de L’Arc, revue incontournable du paysage intellectuel hexagonal pendant près de trente années.

Textes et entretiens: Catherine Clément, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Klossowski, France Berçu, Jean-Noël Vuarnet, Gérard Kaleka, Félix Guattari, Maurice de Gandillac, Pierre Fédida, Jean-Claude Sempé, A. Mieke Taat, Clément Rosset, Brian Evenson.

Originally published in May 1972
Reprinted by Editions Inculte, Paris, October 2005
ISBN 2915453195, 9782915453195
232 pages

publisher

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Alain Badiou: In Praise of Love (2009–) [French, English]

“A new century, new threats to love… Love without risks is like war without deaths – but, today, love is threatened by an alliance of liberalism and hedonism. Caught between consumerism and casual sexual encounters devoid of passion, love – without the key ingredient of chance – is in danger of withering on the vine. In In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou takes on contemporary ‘dating agency’ conceptions of love that come complete with zero-risk insurance – like US zero-casualty bombs. He develops a new take on love that sees it as an adventure, and an opportunity for re-invention, in a constant exploration of otherness and difference that leads the individual out of an obsession with identity and self. Liberal, libertine and libertarian reductions of love to instant pleasure and non-commitment bite the dust as Badiou invokes a supporting cast of thinkers from Plato to Lacan via Karl Marx to form a new narrative of romance, relationships and sex – a narrative that does not fear love.”

With Nicolas Truong
Publisher Flammarion, 2009
Café Voltaire series
ISBN 2081233010, 9782081233010
90 pages

English edition
Translated by Peter Bush
Publisher Serpent’s Tail, 2012
ISBN 1846687799, 9781846687792
104 pages

Badiou’s lecture on love (2008)
Review: Fabian Van Onzen (Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, 2012).

Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

Éloge de l’amour (French, EPUB, updated on 2020-7-5)
In Praise of Love (English, updated on 2020-7-5)