Posts & Reflections
Thoughts on philosophy and theology; helpful advice on teaching, learning, and coding.
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Let’s read Albert Camus’s La Peste (The Plague) together
In view of the COVID-19 information, misinformation and toilet roll hysteria currently gripping the world, over coming weeks I will be channelling my quarantine curiosity into re-reading Albert Camus’s La Peste (The Plague), a story of an epidemic sweeping through the Algerian city of Oran. The novel examines the way in which living in an epidemic
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So you want to read Michel Serres? Start here
I recently received an email from someone wanting to get into Michel Serres’s writing in English translation, and asking where to start. Here are some thoughts, to which I hope to add over time. The suggestions of primary and secondary material below are not meant tobe exhaustive, but to provide a jumping off point for
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The inkling of a different reality. Let’s read Camus’ La Peste #2
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. Knowing what is to come in the novel, Camus’ description of Oran in the opening pages of La Peste is brilliantly prescient. Nobody is expecting their weekly routine of work and leisure to be interrupted. This, Camus notes, is what it means
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Which God(s) do you (not) believe in? An interview with Christopher Watkin, Journal of Baudrillard Studies
A while back now I was interviewed by Jon Baldwin for the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. The original electronic version of the interview is available here. I have also also pasted it below. Which God(s) do you (not) believe in? An interview with Christopher Watkin ISSN: 1705-6411 Volume 16, Number 1 (January 2020)
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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’