Jakob von Uexküll: A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds (1934–) [DE, EN, FR]

““Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject?” With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexküll “a high point of modern antihumanism.”

A key document in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans advances Uexküll’s revolutionary belief that nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worth its name; it also contains his arguments against natural selection as an adequate explanation for the present orientation of a species’ morphology and behavior. A Theory of Meaning extends his thinking on the umwelt, while also identifying an overarching and perceptible unity in nature. Those coming to Uexküll’s work for the first time will find that his concept of the umwelt holds new possibilities for the terms of animality, life, and the framework of biopolitics.”

German edition
With illustrations by George Kriszat
Publisher J. Springer, Berlin, 1934, 102 pages
New edition, with the essay “Bedeutungslehre”, with a Foreword by Adolf Portmann, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1956, 182 pages

English edition
Translated by Claire H. Schiller
In Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept, pp 5-80
Publisher International Universities Press, New York, 1957
Reprinted in Semiotica 89(4), 1992, pp 319-391

New English edition, with the essay “A Theory of Meaning”
Translated by Joseph D. O’Neil
Introduction by Dorion Sagan
Afterword by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2010
Posthumanities series, 12
ISBN 9780816658992
272 pages

Reviews and commentaries: Levi R. Bryant (2010), Robert Geroux (Humanimalia, 2012), Franklin Ginn (Science as Culture, 2013).

Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (German, 1934)
Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen. Bedeutungslehre (German, 1934/1956)
A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men (English, trans. Claire H. Schiller, 1957)
A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men (English, trans. Claire H. Schiller, 1957/1992)
Mondes animaux et monde humain suivi de La théorie de la signification (French, trans. Philippe Muller, 1965)
A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with a Theory of Meaning (English, trans. Joseph D. O’Neil, 2010)

See also chapters 10-11 of Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal: Umwelt; Tick (2002/2004)

Jules-François Dupuis (Raoul Vaneigem): A Cavalier History of Surrealism (1977–) [DE, EN, RU]

“A down-and-dirty survey of the Surrealist movement written under a pseudonym in 1970 by leading Situationist theorist Raoul Vaneigem.

Intended for a high school readership, and dashed off in two weeks, Vaneigem’s sketch bars no holds: disrespectful in the extreme, blistering on Surrealism’s artistic and political aporias, and packed with telling quotations, it also gives respect where respect is due.

Locating Surrealism’s “original sin” in its ideological nature, Vaneigem clearly identifies the “radioactive fragment of radicalism” that the movement never managed completely to shed. If you want an unequivocal answer to the question—”What was living and what was dead in Surrealism?”—look no further.

And for readers interested in the Situationists, this short book sheds a great deal of light on their attitudes, negative and positive, towards their Surrealist predecessors.”

First published in French as Histoire désinvolte du surréalisme, Paul Vermont, Nonville, 1977.

English edition
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Publisher AK Press, 1999
ISBN 1873176945, 9781873176948
131 pages
via ZineLibrary.info, HT esco_bar

Review: Frédéric Thomas (Dissidences, 2013, FR)

Publisher (EN)
Publisher (FR, 2013)
Publisher (RU, 2014)

German: PDF (trans. Pierre Gallissaires and Hanna Mittelstädt, 1979, 160 MB, added on 2020-8-28)
English: PDF, HTML, PDF (trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, 1999)
Russian: PDF (trans. Maria Lepilova, 2014, added on 2020-8-28)

Les affiches de Mai 68, ou, L’imagination graphique (1982)

A catalogue of seventy posters from May 1968 made by art and non-art students from across France using stencil, lithography, linoleum and offset printing. Collected for an exhibition held in the Salle Mortreuil of the Bibliothèque nationale, February-March 1982.

Edited and with an Introduction (in French) by Charles Perussaux
Publisher Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1982
ISBN 2717716254
84 pages

Commentary (Michael Seidman, 2004, pp 130-145)

PDF (via Gallica.fr), Alternative scan
View online (at Gallica.fr)