Michel Serres: Figures of Thought
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Interview: Michel Serres, Philosophy and the Contemporary World
This week I was interviewed by David Webb for the 2020 SEP-FEP (Society of European Philosophy and Forum for European Philosophy) Conference coming up in November. The interview focused on the work of French philosopher Michel Serres (1930-2019), ranging over Serres’s style, politics, ecology, language, and my book Michel Serres: Figures of Thought (Edinburgh University Press,
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Plato’s cave, Michel Serres, and imagining Nietzsche’s madman happy
I’ve been teaching Nietzsche’s madman this week in the context of a unit on literary modernism, and there has been some fascinating discussion among the students about the solar imagery in the passage. As a contribution to that discussion, here is an extract from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought in which I compare the image of
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Video of my Stanford talk. Michel Serres: Thinking in Figures
The audio and slides below were recorded at my talk at Stanford University on January 30, 2020. I had the pleasure of speaking about the late Michel Serres to an audience most of whom had known him personally, some over many years. I presented the approach of Michel Serres: Figures of Thought and suggested why Serres’s
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Michel Serres book excerpt: The end of the Neolithic
This is the seventh in a series of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. The following exceprt is from Chapter Six of Michel Serres: Figures of Thought, entitled ‘Ecology’
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Michel Serres book excerpt: Pragmatogony, prehistory and the cadaverous object
This is the sixth in a series of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. The following exceprt is from Chapter Five of Michel Serres: Figures of Thought, entitled ‘Objects’
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Michel Serres book excerpt: The origin of language
This is the fifth in a series of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. The following exceprt is from Chapter Four of Michel Serres: Figures of Thought, entitled ‘Language’
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Michel Serres book excerpt: Percolation and multiple temporalities
This is the third in a series of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. The following exceprt is from Chapter Two of Michel Serres: Figures of Thought, entitled ‘Space
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Michel Serres book excerpt: Let’s talk about Serres’ style
This is the fourth in a series of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. The following exceprt is from Chapter Three of Michel Serres: Figures of Thought, entitled ‘Serres’
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Michel Serres book excerpt: Serres’ algorithmic universal
This is the second in a series of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. Serres’ algorithmic universal In addition to the sharp contrast between Cartesian analysis and Leibnizian combination,
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Michel Serres book excerpt: Serres, Leibniz, and umbilical thinking
This is the first of a number of extracts from Michel Serres: Figures of Thought that I will be posting in the run-up to the book’s publication around April 2020. The archive of all the extracts will be accessible here. Serres and Leibniz Weighing in at 800 pages and around 300 000 words, Le Système
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Why Michel Serres? A Personal Reflection
On the day of Michel Serres’s death, I reflect on what drew me to write on this beguiling, prescient, inimitable thinker
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Michel Serres book project update: Draft Introduction
For the past three and a half years I have been working on a monograph on the thought of Michel Serres. It has been an exhilarating and exhausting project, in the course of which I have largely forgotten what it feels like to be anywhere near an intellectual comfort zone. During these years I have
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I’m planning to tweet live video of my research seminar on Michel Serres and the Question of Alterity next Tuesday
Next Tuesday I will be giving a seminar at Deakin Univesity, Melbourne, on Michel Serres’s understanding of alterity. The paper comes from the first chapter of my book on Michel Serres, on which I have been able to do some more work recently. I’m trying to get permission from Deakin to tweet a live video
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Michel Serres: From Restricted to General Ecology
My project to write a critical introduction to the thought of Michel Serres continues to advance, and one small piece of the extensive Serresian jig-saw puzzle is of course the distinctive way in which he approaches ecological questions. A couple of years ago I was delighted to be approached by Daniel Finch-Race and Stephanie Posthumus to
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Consolidated list of all the Michel Serres primary bibliography posts
All the categories for the comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography are now up and running. I will keep adding titles over the coming months as I come across them, but in order to make the bibliography easier to navigate I have gathered below links to all the sections, as well as to the entire bibliography.
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (7): newspaper and magazine articles
(1974). “Michel Serres et Jules Verne.” Le Monde, 10 May. http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/03/05/eduquer-au-xxie-siecle_1488298_3232.html. Last accessed April 2015. (1979). “Le culte du ballon ovale.” Le Monde, 5 March. (1980). “Une présentation de la Nouvelle Alliance Commencements.” Le Monde, 4 January. (1982). “Un entretien avec Michel Serres: A quoi sert la philosophie?” Le Nouvel Observateur, 6 February, 82. (1982).
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (6a): audio and video (with links)
This part of the bibliography lists Serres’ film and television appearances, as well as those videos freely available on the web in which he features (see all the Serres bibliography posts together on this page). This is the first of two versions of this section of the bibliography. On the other version, Youtube, Dailymotion and
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (5): interviews
This list does not include audio and video interviews, which will appear in a future installment. There are one or two interviews featuring in other bibliographies that I do not include in this list, because 1) they refer to web links that are now broken and 2) the interview is not available elsewhere. Notably, the following item
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (4): single-authored and co-written articles
As before, let me know if you spot anything I’ve missed… (1961). “Descartes et Leibniz dans les deux manières de penser le réel et la science.” Critique no. 164. Hors série. (1962). “Géométrie de la folie.” Mercure de France 1188: 683-96. (1963). “La Querelle des anciens et des modernes en mathématiques et en épistémologie.”
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (3): archival material
Here is the latest instalment of the comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography: archival material. Archival material about but not written by Michel Serres is not included in this list, which gives a tantalizing glimpse into Serres’ early thought and intellectual formation. Serres, Michel. (Undated). “Essai sur le concept épistémologique d’interférence”. Thèse complémentaire présentée à la
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (2): prefaces, edited books and book chapters
Here is the second instalment of the comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography: prefaces, edited books and book chapters/sections. As before, if you spot a mistake or an omission please let me know and I will make the change. (1975). Comte, Auguste. Philosophie première, Cours de philosophie positive, leçons 1 à 45. Edited by François Dagonet
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Towards a Comprehensive Michel Serres primary bibliography (1): single-authored and co-written books
I’m continuing work on the Michel Serres project and am currently compiling a primary bibliography, filmography, and list of TV appearances. Blimey, he’s written a lot! I have synthesized the bibliographies provided by Steven Connor, the EGS, amazon.fr, the Institut Michel Serres (who copy the EGS list), his Stanford page the IMDB, ina.fr, the Librairie