call for papers on politics and the later Latour

Object-Oriented Philosophy

My own view is clear: if you’re not assimilating Bruno Latour into your work in some way, then you’re probably stuck in some form of pseudo-novel modernism that wants to use ostensibly dark scientific or mathematical results to club other people over the head.

That’s one version of contemporary continental philosophy. But it’s not too late to go back and take the other fork in the road.

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Call for Papers

 Politics and the Later Latour

 

Global Discourse:

An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought

 

Volume 4: Issue 4

November 2014

 

This August sees the publication of the English translation of Bruno Latour’s ‘An Inquiry into Modes of Existence’ (AIME), marking both a landmark in the long-collaborative AIME project and a significant development in Latour’s thought. This issue of Global Discourse will examine the political significance of Latour’s later work, which has seen important…

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Translation of F. Laruelle’s “The Transcendental Computer: A Non-Philosophical Utopia”

Translation of F. Laruelle’s “The Transcendental Computer: A Non-Philosophical Utopia”

The following is a revision and correction of a preliminary draft drawn up by my friend Chris Eby several years ago. Since he undertook the task for the sheer pleasure of it, it’s state on Scribd cried out for a new edition. I have taken the liberty of reworking the essay in its entirety, so now all problems with the translation rest on my shoulders! The Transcendental Computer: A Non-Philosophical Utopia[1] by François LARUELLE. Translated by Taylor Adkins and Chris Eby:

The unified theory of thought and computing [calcul][2], a unification in-the-last-identity, is a task facing every encyclopedic mind (Morin, Serres). It is also the theme of the transcendental computer (TC), of a machine that would have a transcendental relation to philosophy in its entirety and would therefore be able to compute-think the blendings of thought and computing according to a “unified” mode, such as, for example, a transcendental arithmetic like Platonism or any other combination of these prevalent terms in philosophy and computing. Beforehand, a prejudicial question concerning the degree of non-philosophy’s automaticity should be dealt with. In this sense, what follows is an attempt at the limits of the theme of a transcendental computer.

Setting the Scene: From Magician to Miracle Worker, Steven Shapin

from a lecture series on “Trust in Science” Steven Shapin explores the history of the role and status of the scientist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Shapin

Blue Ruin: Spectacles of Disintegration, McKenzie Wark

Media theorist Wark is the author of The Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, and The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International, and wrote two influential pieces on Occupy Wall Street. He will give the keynote address to the graduate student conference put together by our students, Critical Information: Mapping the Intersection of Art and Technology

Update on the AIME Research Group

Launch of the English version of the Latour/AIME website

Launch of the English version of the Latour/AIME website

“We look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions about the platform and to engaging with you on the real core of the research the platform contains, namely the discussion surrounding the modes of existence. To that end, you can contact us by emailing contact@modesofexistence.org and follow our official Twitter account @AIMEproject with the official hashtag #modesofexistence.”

http://aimegroup.wordpress.com/

Complexity as Capture: Neoliberalism and Communicative Capitalism, Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean gives the opening plenary lecture at the ‘Neoliberalism, Crisis and the World System’ conference via http://progressivegeographies.com/
She blogs @: http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/

if anyone knows of ANTish work being done on quants or other aspects of cyber market trading please let us know!
http://www.cresc.ac.uk/publications/deep-stall-the-euro-zone-crisis-banking-reform-and-politics

Acting in an Uncertain World:Thinking Techno-Ecologically? Anita Girvan

Acting in an Uncertain World: Thinking Techno-Ecologically? Anita Girvan

Borrowing the title from an essay by Michael Callon and his colleagues working at the intersection of science and technology studies and politics, this presentation, “Acting in an Uncertain World”, attempts to think through questions of environment and technology in a time of proliferating ecological crises. These crises, no longer conceived of as ‘natural’ disasters, or ‘human’ problems but deep entanglements, suggest new forms of technologically enabled democracy, where both slowness (slowing down to institutionalize deliberative processes) and speed (especially in communicating to inform an engaged citizenry) may interact in novel ways.

Dan Sperber on Information Flows & Eddies

Dan Sperber is a French social and cognitive scientist. He holds an emeritus research professorship at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, a recurrent visiting professorship at the Department of Philosophy of the Central European University in Budapest, and is the director of the International Cognition and Culture Institute. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology and linguistic pragmatics. He is the author numerous articles in anthropology, linguistics, philosophy and psychology and of three books: Rethinking Symbolism (Cambridge UP 1975), On Anthropological Knowledge (Cambridge UP 1985), and Explaining Culture (Blackwell 1996). Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson have developed a cognitive approach to communication known as ‘Relevance Theory’.

The Spaces of Practices and Large Social Phenomena, Ted Schatzki

This presentation argues that the spaces of large social phenomena are versions of the spaces of social practices, or rather, versions of the spaces of bundles of practices and material arrangements. It begins by discussing how practice-arrangement bundles both have and make spaces, differentiating between objective spaces and something called ‘activity space’. The presentation then explains how the spaces of such large phenomena as universities, economic systems, and international federations embrace the objective spaces, and draw on the interwoven activity spaces, of the practice-arrangement bundles they encompass. The talk concludes by disparaging the idea that society, or social life, is composed of levels, arguing that micro and macro phenomena, like small and large ones, are laid out in the same one plenum of linked practices and arrangements.
http://conceptsinsts.wikispaces.com/file/view/PracticeTurnInContemporaryTheory.pdf