A glimpse into philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s formative encounter with Martin Heidegger, told through his notes from the Le Thor seminars.
What does it mean for thought to have a time of its own? In The Time of Thinking, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben presents the notes he took during two seminars with Martin Heidegger at Le Thor, Provence, preserving the compressed, working rhythm of a notebook while clarifying only what might otherwise be opaque. Throughout these pages, vignettes from Agamben’s time in Le Thor—walking among pines to a precipitous viewpoint once painted by Paul Cézanne, sitting in quiet recollection—open onto reflections on memory, youth, and the shape of a life not yet ‘filled in’. Illustrated with archival materials, the book offers a small, carefully composed record of philosophical attention: not a retrospective monument, but a living trace of thought as it happens in time and place.
The first book-length literary history of some of early modern Europe’s most influential carceral institutions, including England’s Bridewell
More than 250 years before the rise of the modern penitentiary, houses of correction pioneered the use of forced labor and individualized sentences within institutions of confinement, promoting reform and the “hope of amendment” for every individual. Yet these earlier carceral institutions faced many of the problems that remain familiar today: corruption scandals, recidivism, and abuses of power.
In Houses of Correction, Matthew Ritger turns to the archives of England’s first house of correction, Bridewell, to show how humanist reformers provided ideas, justifications, and administration for what came to be called bridewells, workhouses, and “Literary worke-houses,” even as repeated scandals made it clear that these coercive institutions would forever be at odds with the ideals of humanist culture. Examining how the work of writers including More, Shakespeare, and Milton dealt with humanism’s entanglements with these new prisons, Houses of Correction constructs the first book-length literary history of some of early modern Europe’s most influential carceral institutions.
Les Aveux de la chair, quatrième et dernier volume d’une Histoire de la sexualité, est en réalité le premier auquel Michel Foucault s’était attelé après La Volonté de savoir. Il y traite des règles et des doctrines que les Pères de l’Église ont élaborées entre le IIᵉ et le IVᵉ siècle au sujet de la chair et du désir (libido) : sacrements du baptême et de la pénitence, examens de conscience, virginité et mariage… Au cours de son travail, Michel Foucault s’était persuadé que l’essentiel de ces règles et doctrines était un héritage remanié des disciplines de soi élaborées par les philosophes grecs et latins de l’Antiquité classique et tardive. C’est à leur analyse qu’il s’est appliqué, pour aboutir en 1984 à la publication simultanée de L’Usage des plaisirs et du Souci de soi. Publié à titre posthume, ce livre-ci est donc un premier jet auquel Foucault comptait se remettre au moment de sa mort. La réunion des volumes de Dits et écrits (1954-1988), publiés en 1994, puis celle des cours au Collège de France en ont retardé l’édition et la mise au point. Tel quel, désormais, il constitue un état très élaboré de la pensée de Foucault, et peut-être le cœur même de l’entreprise : la partie à laquelle il attachait assez d’importance pour se lancer dans l’aventure.
Dix ans après la mort de Foucault (1984), ses Dits et écrits rassemblaient en quatre volumes les textes épars que le philosophe avait publiés en France et à l’étranger. La présente anthologie donne à lire cinquante-cinq de ces textes, parmi les plus originaux. Dans ces préfaces, articles, entretiens et conférences, qui s’échelonnent de 1961 à 1984, on voit tantôt jaillir l’étincelle d’un livre à venir, tantôt s’ouvrir un chemin vers ces espaces « absolument autres » chers à Foucault. Souvent, on l’écoute questionner sa pratique philosophique et réfléchir à son parcours. Le style, merveilleux gage de cohérence de l’ensemble, se manifeste jusque dans le grain de la voix écrite. Les figures de Raymond Roussel, Bataille, Blanchot, Magritte, Deleuze, Nietzsche, ou encore des Pères de l’Église traversent ces pages, dans lesquelles sont abordés les thèmes foucaldiens par excellence : folie, enfermement, sexualité, pouvoir ou écriture de soi. Les textes ont été établis sur les documents originaux, et les célèbres réponses que Foucault apporta à l’interrogation « Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur ? » pourront être lues à la fois dans la version publiée de son vivant et dans un état inédit, fort différent. Foucault avait le goût, devenu légendaire, de la recherche en bibliothèque, mais aussi bien celui de l’intervention dans l’espace public. Le présent volume, qui paraît pour le centenaire de sa naissance, témoigne de ces deux dispositions, a priori éloignées. Chaque texte est accompagné d’une notule qui le contextualise. Un index raisonné et analytique fournit les informations utiles sur les personnes et les œuvres citées.
En 1978, le journal italien Le Corriere della Serra envoie Michel Foucault en Iran pour y mener un « reportage d’idées », à l’intersection de ses engagements et de son travail intellectuel. Pour celui qui a été au contact d’exilés iraniens grâce au GIP (Groupe d’information sur les prisons), l’une des premières motivations de ce voyage est de mettre fin au silence occidental devant la répression exercée par le régime du Chah. Michel Foucault est un des rares intellectuels français à s’être rendu sur les lieux, en septembre et novembre 1978, à avoir enquêté et cherché à comprendre comment les Iraniens pouvaient risquer leur vie pour un improbable « gouvernement islamique ». Il est fasciné par le potentiel révolutionnaire de cette révolte inédite, avant la proclamation de la République islamique en février 1979. On lui a souvent reproché par la suite d’avoir été aveugle face aux dérives autoritaires qu’incarne ce régime. Lire l’épisode 1978-1979 à la lumière de ce qui s’est produit ensuite revient à faire un mauvais procès à l’auteur de Surveiller et punir. A contrario, ce reportage unique en son genre reste précieux pour comprendre la situation en Iran à l’époque comme aujourd’hui.
It’s not clear if the first or third will be any different from already available texts. But the second, in the expensive Pléiade series, says the texts are re-edited, though to what extent isn’t said. It does include the previously-unpublished Buffalo version of the ‘What is an author?’ text.
Some years ago, I realised what claimed to be the Buffalo version was not that, but rather a different translation of the Paris version with some amendments. The actual Buffalo text was later found, both the manuscript and a transcription. It will be good to have both Paris and Buffalo versions available, but hopefully not just in this expensive text.
Andres Saenz de Sicilia, Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society – Brill, November 2024; paperback Haymarket, November 2025
Capital is often depicted as an all-encompassing and abstract social force which seeks to “subsume” all human life. But what is “subsumption” and how might it be resisted? Tracing the discourse of subsumption through the work of Kant, Hegel, Marx and the critical Marxist tradition, this book offers a materialist framework for analysing capitalist power. Saenz de Sicilia argues that capitalist subsumption operates at three distinct yet interrelated levels: exchange, production, and reproduction, with each characterised by distinct logics of domination and resistance. Conflicts over subsumption at each of these levels lie at the heart of capitalism’s struggle to determine the shapes of human social life.
A major intervention into debates surrounding the historical trajectories of capitalism, Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society systematically refutes the influential thesis that we are now in a stage of “total” capitalist subsumption which leaves no space of refuge or resistance.
Maps have escaped from the confines of road atlases or decorative frames to being ubiquitous on our screens. Using a GPS while driving, looking for a shop on Google Maps, or tracking a food delivery – all involve some form of digital maps. Rather than depicting existing reality, maps are active agents in changing it, all the while making use of personalization algorithms, content curation and other techniques that are pervasive in digital media. In doing so, maps are reorienting our geography and further fracturing shared reality into individual spaces.
Maps as Media investigates digital maps as new media objects. Combining perspectives from media studies, critical cartography, and science and technology studies, the book examines the transformation of mapping from a specialized domain into a commonplace media practice. Alex Gekker argues that maps are reactive and reflective, fuelled by the ability of software to track, adapt and update. This naturalized state of digital maps allows them to become powerful tools for those wishing to exert power on their end-users. As a growing number of digital technologies integrate GPS and other spatial awareness into their core functionality, this book asks what happens when maps become media.
Original and thought-provoking, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Media and Communication Studies, Geography, and Science and Technology Studies.
In We Live with the Sea, Andrew Littlejohn addresses the implementation and controversy surrounding safety infrastructures following the March 2011 tsunami in northeastern Japan. While the Japanese government proposed and enforced infrastructural transformations in the wake of the tsunami, these changes did not consider the impact on residents who built their communities and livelihoods around the coast. Focusing on the tsunami survivors who resisted government plans for increased coastal defenses, Littlejohn highlights alternative proposals offered by the local residents as well as the environmental, ecological, and more-than-human dependencies and imbrications those proposals reveal. In doing so, he argues that imposed modernist safety structures undermine the very things they claim to protect, showing how attempts to “ecologize” safety may offer more sustainable ways of thinking about security, preservation, and infrastructure.
Offers a convergence of ideas as the basis for a contemporary universalism with global values
Locates a flow of intellectual thought from China to the West, which challenges Western-centric thought
Modernises the ancient wisdom of traditional Chinese thought through Western philosophy and postmodern critical theories
Investigates how intellectual dialogues enable Chinese and Western intellectual traditions to illuminate and complement each other
Finds a common conceptual ground for the fusion of intellectual visions
Conceives a conceptual framework for global Confucianism and transcultural universalism
Ming Dong Gu bridges the divide between Chinese and Western thought. He does this by addressing key topics that have been of enduring interest to thinkers, scholars and intellectuals in an effort to bring about the fusion of horizons between Chinese and Western thought. These focus on the flow of Chinese thought to the West, Chinese and Western metaphysics, and the foundational ideas from both traditions including the Tao, Taiji, Logos, One, the Yijing, Confucianism, individualism and universalism.
In addressing these key areas, Gu offers new interpretations of ideas, concepts, and principles in Chinese and Western thought and formulates new ideas, insights and conceptual frameworks for Chinese and Western thought to complement and mutually enrich each other.
Charles Lincoln interprets the U.S. Constitution through the mythic and psychological lens of Georges Dumézil’s trifunctional framework-priest, warrior, and producer-linking it to thinkers like Homer, Plato, Freud, and Montesquieu. Rather than viewing the federal structure as a mere legal arrangement, the book reveals how judicial, executive, and legislative powers reflect enduring cultural archetypes, offering a fresh perspective on constitutional legitimacy, the separation of powers, and civic identity.
Toward Border Abolition is an interdisciplinary exploration of border abolition that brings together scholars of international migration, border studies, and law who historicize the current border regime, critique the violence of border policing, and consider alternatives. The contributors explore the ways that migrants practice objective border abolitionism by circumventing the sociopolitical order imposed by nation-states. They illustrate how various methods of migrating, from seeking asylum to “unauthorized” border crossing, all enact a fundamentally human freedom of movement that precedes state border control as it exists today. Ultimately, Toward Border Abolition questions the assumed legitimacy of borders, nation-states, and immigration law while simultaneously showing how migrants’ transgression of borders opens new vistas for remaking the world.
Explores the psychoanalytic dynamics linking democracy and populism in the Yellow Vests movement
Bridges political theory and psychoanalysis in a striking interdisciplinary account of the Yellow Vests
Drawing on unique psychosocial interviews with grassroots protesters, it reveals how personal stories erupted into collective mobilisation
Makes psychoanalytic ideas—desire, fantasy, enjoyment, symptom—tangible through vivid empirical examples tested in the classroom
Recasts populism as aesthetic transgression, bringing Lacanian theory into dialogue with radical democracy
The Yellow Vests movement (‘Les gilets jaunes’) occupied roundabouts across France in late 2018 and remains a puzzling phenomenon. Bringing together protestors across the political spectrum, the movement’s democratic character remains ambiguous. Was this populist uprising a radicalisation of democracy that gave voice to the excluded, or an undemocratic claim to speak for “the people” while entrenching hierarchies?
Radical Democracy, Populism and Desire articulates empirical analysis and theoretical reflection, using the Yellow Vests as a prism to rethink democratic theory. Drawing on psychosocial interviews with grassroots participants, it explores how identities were constructed, contested and steered within the movement. Thomás Zicman de Barros argues that the protests were driven by a desire for recognition and belonging, but that this desire could be mobilised in sharply different directions. By tracing these coexisting modes of identification, the book exposes the fraught and ambiguous ties between populism and democracy in contemporary politics.
