nine

variable spray
News from the Collapse crew
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We are pleased to announce that COLLAPSE Volume II will be published at the beginning of March 2007.

The second volume of Collapse resumes the construction of a conceptual space unbounded by any disciplinary constraints, comprising subjects from probability theory to theology, from quantum theory to neuroscience, from astrophysics to necrology, and involving them in unforeseen and productive syntheses.

Collapse Volume II features a selection of speculative essays by some of the foremost young philosophers at work today, together with new work from artists and cinéastes, and searching interviews with leading scientists. Against the tide of institutional balkanisation and specialisation, this volume testifies to a defiant reanimation of the most radical philosophical problematics – the status of the scientific object, metaphysics and its 'end', the prospects for a revival of speculative realism, the possibility of phenomenology, transcendence and the divine, the nature of causation, the necessity of contingency – both through a fresh reappropriation of the philosophical tradition and through an openness to its outside. The breadth of philosophical thought in this volume is matched by the surprising and revealing thematic connections that emerge between the philosophers and scientists who have contributed.

• Ray Brassier (Middlesex University, author of the forthcoming Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction ) gives the first full-length exposition and critical examination in English of Quentin Meillassoux's important book Après la Finitude, which mounts a radical critique of post-Kantian philosophy o n the basis of its inability to account for the literal meaning of scientific statements concerning 'arche-fossils' existing anterior to the possibility of their phenomenal manifestation.

• Building upon his thesis in Après la Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux (ENS, Paris) proposes a reprisal of Hume's problem of causation from a radical ontological perspective. By affirming the absolute contingency of natural laws, Meillassoux argues for a revival of a realistic metaphysics which he calls 'speculative materialism' and brings to light a powerful new ontological concept of time.

• In an extended interview, Roberto Trotta (theoretical cosmologist, Lockyer Research Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society at the Astrophysics Department at Oxford University) describes in detail his work as a scientist engaged in surveying the 'arche-fossil', and discusses the ways in which the cross-disciplinary nature of the search for dark matter – an intense collaborative endeavour involving mathematics, astrophysics, theoretical modelling and statistics – anticipates the problematic status of its objects. The interview reveals how the process of determination of this field of research on the 'outer edge' of science, bounded equally by technological, probabilistic and logical constraints, raises questions as to the status of scientific thought and problematises its very conceptual foundations, thus emphasising its continuities with traditionally 'philosophical' concerns.

• In 'On Vicarious Causation' Graham Harman (American University in Cairo; author of Tool-Being and Guerilla Metaphysics) puts forward a new realist 'object-oriented' metaphysics which, refusing the primacy of human experience and in defiance of post-Kantian 'philosophies of access', seeks to speak for the abyssal depths of 'the objects themselves'.

• In an interview with Paul Churchland (U.Cal, San Diego) the brilliantly iconoclastic philosopher of mind and science reiterates his commitment to eliminative materialism, exploring its broad consequences for science and philosophy, and remarking key research outcomes and philosophical problems which have influenced its development.

• Clémentine Duzer & Laura Gozlan present a series of stills taken from their film Nevertheless Empire, an expressionist science-fiction noir of pestilence, biopolitics and desire.

• Artist Kristen Alvanson's photo/diagrammatic essay on the ontotheology of the Middle-Eastern graveyard examines what differences in burial practices propose as to the philosophical thinking of space and of dwelling and examines the consequences for our image of thought.

• In a continuation of his unrivalled radical questioning of the ultimate bases of the 'clash of civilisations', Reza Negarestani details, through a searching analysis of Islamic and Western theologies, how the absolute exteriority of Allah in Islam results in a particular conception of temporality, different vectors for the propagation of faith, and an immanent apocalypse which cannot be reduced to a chronological moment or a possibility of unification.

Order or subscribe at :

http://www.urbanomic.com/order.php

COLLAPSE Volume II

Edited by Robin Mackay

March 2007.

Paperback 115x175mm 330pp

Limited Edition of 1000 numbered copies.

ISBN 0-9553087-1-2

RAY BRASSIER

The Enigma of Realism

QUENTIN MEILLASSOUX

Potentiality and Virtuality

ROBERTO TROTTA

Dark Matter: Facing the Arche-Fossil (Interview)

GRAHAM HARMAN

On Vicarious Causation

PAUL CHURCHLAND

Demons Get Out! (Interview)

CLÉMENTINE DUZER & LAURA GOZLAN

Nevertheless Empire

REZA NEGARESTANI

Islamic Exotericism: Apocalypse in the Wake of Refractory Impossibility

KRISTEN ALVANSON

Elysian Space in the Middle East

Still Available: Collapse Volume I

COLLAPSE VOLUME I

ALAIN BADIOU

'Philosophy, Sciences, Mathematics' (Interview)

GREGORY CHAITIN

'Epistemology as Information Theory'

REZA NEGARESTANI

'The Militarization of Peace'

MATTHEW WATKINS

'Prime Evolution(Interview)'

'INCOGNITUM'

'Introduction to ABJAD'

NICK BOSTROM

'Existential Risk (Interview)

THOMAS DUZER

'On the Mathematics of Intensity'

KEITH TILFORD

'Crowds'

NICK LAND

'Qabbala 101'

Forthcoming Issues: Concept-Horror; Unknown Deleuze ; Geophilosophy.

COLLAPSE is now available in the following fine bookstores: Vrin, Paris; ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) bookshop, London; Tate Modern bookshop, London; QI, Oxford; Blackwell, Oxford; Nikos Books (11th & 6th) and St. Mark's, New York; Floating World Comics, Portland OR; Gleebooks, Sydney, Australia.

yours,

Robin Mackay

(Editor)

http://www.urbanomic.com
 

zhao

there are no accidents
sounds good number 9. thanks for heads up. anyone here read the first volume? think I'll order them.
 

MrFence

Oh the humanity.
I've just read Vol. One and just starting Vol. Two, they've been on my shelf since they first came out but I never got round to reading them.

I have to say I'm really enjoying it, it's a wonderful collection of thought and the Interviews work especially well. Did anyone else feel like Ray Brassier's style was akin to shouting through a megaphone with caps Lock on? I hadn't read anything (well not too much) by him or Meillassoux prior to this and I'm certainly interested in reading further, anyone have any recommendations (free one's preferably)?

I'm stuck between the articles I've read attacking the Intentional phenomenologists (like Husserl) through extreme reduction, which seems pointless as Heidegger already pointed out how Intentionality is wrong, and the misreading of Heidegger as a strong correlationist (though I still think their arguments might apply to him but in a similar way to the arguments against that Deleuze skims over in Foucault). What should I read that gives me an understanding of what they're about rather than why everyone else is a thickie?

I'm sure I've misunderstood something along the line but one must speculate to accumulate after all.

Cheers.
 
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