A new book on Bruno Latour

Anders Blok and Torben Elgaard Jensen’s book on Latour has now come out in English: Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World, published by Routledge. (The original Danish version came out in 2009, the same year in which Harman’s Prince of Networks was published.)

French sociologist and philosopher, Bruno Latour, is one of the most significant and creative thinkers of the last decades. Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a Hybrid World is the first comprehensive and accessible English-language introduction to this multi-faceted work. The book focuses on core Latourian themes:

• contribution to science studies (STS – Science, Technology & Society)
• philosophical approach to the rise and fall of modernity
• innovative thoughts on politics, nature, and ecology
• contribution to the branch of sociology known as ANT – Actor-Network Theory.

With ANT, Latour has pioneered an approach to socio-cultural analysis built on the notion that social life arise in complex networks of actants – people, things, ideas, norms, technologies, and so on – influencing each other in dynamic ways. This book explores how Latour helps us make sense of the changing interrelations of science, technology, society, nature, and politics beyond modernity.

Contents:

1. On the Trails of Bruno Latour’s Hybrid World
2. Anthropology of Science
3. Philosophy of Modernity
4. Political Ecology
5. Sociology of Associations
6. Conclusion: The Enlightenment Project of Bruno Latour
7. ‘We would like to do a bit of science studies with you…’ An Interview with Bruno Latour

The Prince and the Wolf on iTunes

The Prince and the Wolf is now available on iTunes (only in the USA for now), if you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Circling the Quadruple Object

Christopher Kullenberg’s ANT-ish reading of Harman’s The Quadruple Object.

“I am a Hegelian looking for facts to fit the theory”

“A lot of what I write is blah, blah, bullshit, a diversion from the 700-page book on Hegel I should be writing.” Slavoj Žižek interviewed in The Guardian.

Harman’s Meillassoux book available

Graham Harman’s new book, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making, is now available on The Book Depository website. My experience with The Book Depository suggests that this is probably a limited amount of copies, and once they sell out they’ll go back to pre-order. The Book Depository (recently bought by Amazon) ships free worldwide.

Update: Well, I see it had already sold out within a couple of hours. So that was that… Oh, wait. The hardback is still there.

Quentin Meillassoux has been described as the most rapidly prominent French philosopher in the Anglophone world since Jacques Derrida in the 1960’s. With the publication of After Finitude (2006), this daring protege of Alain Badiou became one of the world’s most visible younger thinkers. In this book, his fellow Speculative Realist, Graham Harman, assesses Meillassoux’s publications in English so far. Also included are an insightful interview with Meillassoux and first-time translations of excerpts from L’Inexistence divine (The Divine Inexistence), his famous but still unpublished major book.

Quentin Meillassoux’s entry into the philosophical scene marks the beginning of a new epoch: the end of the transcendental approach and the return to realist ontology. Harman’s beautifully written and argued book provides not just an introduction to Meillassoux, but much more: one authentic philosopher writing about another – a rare true encounter. It is not only for those who want to understand Meillassoux, but also for those who want to witness a radical shift in the entire field of philosophy. It is a book that will shake the very foundations of your world!

Slavoj Žižek

P.S. The Quadruple Object is also back on the menu (including an EPUB-DRM eBook version).

The Quadruple Object product details

(source: www.tools4trade.com and Michael Flower)

Features:

• Moves objects (and sometimes even subjects) with ease.
• Has been designed to hold and support a large variety of objects.
• Has an unlimited uplifting capacity.
• Clings to any type of surface thanks to its unique vicarious technology (patent pending).
• This makes it ideal for metaphysical speculation and heavy lifting.
• Available in lightweight aluminium, paperback or Kindle edition.

The Prince and the Wolf on Kindle

Kindle editions of The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE are now also available on Amazon US and Amazon UK. Somewhat counter-intuitively though the electronic edition is only available for pre-order and according to Amazon it will only be released on the official publication date (29 July 2011), while they’ve been happily selling the paperback version for the last 10 days. In fact Amazon US now seems to have run out of the paperback, although it’s still available on Amazon UK. An alternative source for US customers is The Book Depository, which not only has free shipping to the US but (rather controversially) has just been bought by Amazon last week.

On sex, worms, and entrepreneurship

I have a post on the above titillating topics over at the New Combinations blog.

News of the World

A copy of The Prince and the Wolf arrived in the post today!

Oh, yeah. In other news, the 168 year-old News of the World, the biggest-selling English language newspaper in the world has been sacrificed by the Murdoch empire, in its attempt to cleanse itself of some really bad karma. Apparently even the Prince’s knee had something to do with its downfall according to The Telegraph.

Generally I’m not a big fan of tabloids but I’m a bit shocked to see how someone can decide overnight to expunge a piece of British cultural history. The analogy that comes to mind is that of a historical building. Were the Murdochs to own the Tower of London and suddenly find out that some bad things were going on in there under their watch, would they be allowed to just knock the place down to purify themselves? Not to mention that police investigations are ongoing and a couple of public inquiries are on the way, while the organisation in question is shut down on 3 days’ notice without any prior internal or external consultation…

The Quadruple Object available in the UK and elsewhere

Graham Harman’s The Quadruple Object is now also available in the UK and a range of other countries worldwide from The Book Depository.

Update [22:00, 4-Jul-11]: I noticed that The Quadruple Object flickers in an out of existence during the day on The Book Depository website. For a few hours it was on sale today, then it went back to pre-order. So it’s worth checking again, if it’s not available in the first instance.