Topologies of the Flesh


Book Description

This is an unprecedented marriage of topology (a branch of mathematics dealing with the properties of geometric figures that stay the same when the figures are distorted) and phenomenology. Through his unique application of qualitative mathematics, Rosen offers a detailed exploration of previously uncharted dimensions of human experience and the natural world.




Writing the Structures of the Subject


Book Description

This book examines and explores Jacques Lacan’s controversial topologisation of psychoanalysis, and seeks to persuade the reader that this enterprise was necessary and important. In providing both an introduction to a fundamental component of Lacan’s theories, as well as readings of texts that have been largely ignored, it provides a thorough critical interpretation of his work. Will Greenshields argues that Lacan achieved his most pedagogically clear and successful presentations of his most essential and notoriously complex concepts – such as structure, the subject and the real – through the deployment of topology. The book will help readers to better understand Lacan, and also those concepts that have become prevalent in various intellectual discourses such as contemporary continental philosophy, politics and the study of ideology, and literary or cultural criticism.




Performance and the Politics of Space


Book Description

This collection asks what's at stake when a theatrical space is created and when a performance takes place: under what circumstances the topology of theatre becomes political. It visits a politics of inclusion and exclusion, of distributions and placements, and of spatial appropriation and utopian concepts in theatre history and contemporary performance.




The Self-evolving Cosmos


Book Description

This unique book offers an original way of thinking about two of the most significant problems confronting modern theoretical physics: the unification of the forces of nature and the evolution of the universe. In bringing out the inadequacies of the prevailing approach to these questions, the author demonstrates the need for more than just a new theory. The meanings of space and time themselves must be radically rethought, which requires a whole new philosophical foundation. To this end, the book turns to the phenomenological writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Their insights into space and time bring the natural world to life in a manner well-suited to the dynamic phenomena of contemporary physics.In aligning continental thought with problems in physics and cosmology, the book makes use of topology. Phenomenological intuitions about space and time are systematically fleshed out via an unconventional and innovative approach to this qualitative branch of mathematics. The author's pioneering work in topological phenomenology is applied to such topics as quantum gravity, cosmogony, symmetry, spin, vorticity, dimension theory, Kaluza-Klein and string theories, fermion-boson interrelatedness, hypernumbers, and the mind-matter interface.




Entangling Forms


Book Description

The volume draws from Charles S. Peirce's pragmatic philosophy, as well as from diverse areas in contemporary arts and sciences, and certain facets of Buddhist philosophy – especially regarding notions of interconnectedness, self-organization, and co-participation of the knowing subject with her inner world, her socio-cultural world, and her physical environment. Contradictory, complementary, and coalescence are also fundamental watchwords, in addition to entanglement. 'Contradictory', since conflicts, clashes and inconsistencies there will always be, in spite attempts to resolve them. 'Complementarity', since poles of opposition can at least provisionally be resolved by mediation and moderation, however vaguely and ambiguously, such that consonance might emerge from dissonance, balance from imbalance, and accord from discord. And 'coalescence', since the union of disparities is an ongoing, and always incomplete, process; it is never fixed product. These concepts, along with the key word, entanglement, place Peirce in a new light, giving rise to new questions and possible responses from readers who are searching for alternate means of understanding in our increasingly complex, rapidly globalizing world.




The Question of Painting


Book Description

Since the latter half of the 20th century, committed art has been associated with conceptual, critical and activist practices. Painting, by contrast, is all too often defined as an outmoded, reactionary, market-led venture; an ineffectual medium from the perspective of social and political engagement. How can paintings change the world today? The question of painting, in particular, fuelled the investigations of a major 20th-century philosopher: the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907-61). Merleau-Ponty was at the forefront of attempts to place philosophy on a new footing by contravening the authority of Cartesian dualism and objectivist thought-an authority that continues to limit present-day intellectual, imaginative, and ethical possibilities. A central aim of The Question of Painting is to provide a closely focused, chronological account of his unfolding project and its relationship with art, clarifying how painting, as a paradigmatically embodied and situated mode of investigation, helped him to access the fundamentally “intercorporeal” basis of reality as he saw it, and articulate its lived implications. With an exclusive and extended conversation about the contemporary virtues of painting with New York based artist Leah Durner, for whom the work of Merleau-Ponty is an important source of inspiration, The Question of Painting brings today's much debated concerns about the criticality of painting into contact with the question of painting in philosophy.




The Black Nightgown


Book Description

A woman's dream of being trapped in a black nightgown reveals a dread that dominates her psyche and blocks her development as a self. In her story and others, Jungian analyst Nathan Schwartz-Salant reveals how the same complex characterizes our society as a whole. This archetypal pattern is the Fusional Complex. The Fusional Complex is like the Renaissance alchemists' prima materia, said to be vile and worthless, ubiquitous and easily discarded, and yet essential for the creation of that most highly prized goal of the alchemical opus: the lapis, a symbol of the self. Like the prima materia, the Fusional Complex is found everywhere--in addiction and codependency, in masochistic submissions that sacrifice essence and potential, in the dark corners of relationships that are fixed in old patterns and simmer in contempt and resentment, and in the array of the character disorders. Because it generally goes unseen, however, these disorders do not transform. Through the theory of the Fusional Complex, and with the non-ordinary perception that detects it, we can learn to make transformative discoveries that are rarely possible through usual analytic procedures. And through the cultural and individual examples of The Black Nightgown, we will see that the Fusional Complex is the doorway through which any new form of consciousness and associated self--the structure that bestows a sense of identity and order within human life--must pass.




Dimensions of Apeiron


Book Description

This book explores the evolution of space and time from the "apeiron" -the spaceless, timeless chaos of primordial nature. Rosen examines Western culture's effort to deny "apeiron," and the critical need now to lift the repression on "apeiron" for the sake of human individuation. "This groundbreaking book brings to fruition Rosen's reflexive theory of time and space. With recent physics breaking linear time symmetry, this unique integration of physics and philosophy is indeed timely." -Eugene T. Gendlin, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, University of Chicago "Rosen's ideas are precisely stated, and he draws upon an impressive range of sources, both ancient and modern. The author shows the inadequacy of conventional thinking about space and time and argues persuasively for an intriguing new alternative. This important book may have radical implications for the conduct of science in the 21st century." -Brian Josephson, Cambridge University Professor of Physics, Nobel Laureate




Parables for the Virtual


Book Description

Since its publication twenty years ago, Brian Massumi's pioneering Parables for the Virtual has become an essential text for interdisciplinary scholars across the humanities. Massumi views the body and media such as television, film, and the internet as cultural formations that operate on multiple registers of sensation. Renewing and assessing William James's radical empiricism and Henri Bergson's philosophy of perception through the filter of the postwar French philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, Massumi links a cultural logic of variation to questions of movement, affect, and sensation. Replacing the traditional opposition of literal and figural with distinctions between stasis and motion and between actual and virtual, Massumi tackles related theoretical issues by applying them to cultural mediums as diverse as architecture, body art, the digital art of Stelarc, and Ronald Reagan's acting career. The result is an intriguing combination of cultural theory, science, and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and multifaceted argument. This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new preface in which Massumi situates the book in relation to developments since its publication and outlines the evolution of its main concepts. It also includes two short texts, “Keywords for Affect” and “Missed Conceptions about Affect,” in which Massumi explicates his approach to affect in ways that emphasize the book's political and philosophical stakes.




The Senses of Touch


Book Description

Touch is the first sense to develop in the womb, yet often it is overlooked. The Senses of Touch examines the role of touching and feeling as part of the fabric of everyday, embodied experience. How can we think about touch? Problems of touch and tactility run as a continuous thread in philosophy, psychology, medical writing and representations in art, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Picking through some of these threads, the book 'feels' its way towards writing and thinking about touch as both sensory and affective experience. Taking a broadly phenomenological framework that traces tactility from Aristotle through the Enlightenment to the present day, the book examines the role of touch across a range of experiences including aesthetics, digital design, visual impairment and touch therapies. The Senses of Touch thereby demonstrates the varieties of sensory experience, and explores the diverse range of our 'senses' of touch.