One of the most innovative and brilliant philosophers of his generation, but largely neglected until he was brought to public attention by Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon presents a challenge to nearly every category and method of traditional philosophy. Psychic and Collective Individuation is undoubtedly Simondon's most important work and its influence, clearly felt in Stiegler and DeLanda, has continued to grow. David Scott provides the first full introduction to this work, which will inspire as well as instruct philosophers working in Continental thought, philosophy of science, social theory and political philosophy.

This combination of historiography and theory offers the growing Anglophone readership interested in the ideas of Gilbert Simondon a thorough and unprecedented survey of the French philosopher’s entire oeuvre. The publication, which breaks new ground in its thoroughness and breadth of analysis, systematically traces the interconnections between Simondon’s philosophy of science and technology on the one hand, and his political philosophy on the other. The author sets Simondon’s ideas in the context of the epistemology of the late 1950s and the 1960s in France, the milieu that shaped a generation of key French thinkers such as Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida. This volume explores Simondon’s sources, which were as eclectic as they were influential: from the philosophy of Bergson to the cybernetics of Wiener, from the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to the epistemology of Canguilhem, and from Bachelard’s philosophy of science to the positivist sociology and anthropology of luminaries such as Durkheim and Leroi-Gourhan. It also tackles aspects of Simondon’s philosophy that relate to Heidegger and Elull in their concern with the ontological relationship between technology and society and discusses key scholars of Simondon such as Barthélémy, Combes, Stiegler, and Virno, as well as the work of contemporary protagonists in the philosophical debate on the relevance of technique. The author’s intimate knowledge of Simondon’s language allows him to resolve many of th e semantic errors and misinterpretations that have plagued reactions to Simondon’s many philosophical neologisms, often drawn from his scientific studies.

With cities increasingly following rigid rules for designing out crime and producing spaces under surveillance, this book asks how information shapes bodies, space, and, ultimately, policymaking. In recent years, public spaces have changed in Western countries, with the urban realm becoming an ever-more monitored, privatised, homogeneous, and aseptic space that has lost its character, uniqueness, and diversity in the name of ‘security’. This underpins precise moral and political choices in terms of what a space should be, how it can be used, and by whom. These choices generate material consequences concerning urban inequality and freedom, or otherwise, of movement. Based on ethnographic and autoethnographic explorations in London’s ‘criminal’ spaces, this book illustrates how rules, policies, and moral values, far from being abstract concepts, are in fact material. Outlining the basis of a new urban information ethics, the book both exposes and challenges how moral values and predefined categories are applied to, and materially shape, the movement of bodies in urban space with regard to crime and security policies. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s information theory and a wide range of work in urban studies, geography, and planning, as well as in surveillance studies, object-oriented ontology, and contemporary theoretical work on both materiality and affect, the book provides a radically new perspective on urban space in general, and crime and security in particular. This book uses a balanced mix of theoretical concepts and empirical study to bring theory and practice together in an intertwining of ethnography and autoethnography. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of urban studies, urban geography, sociology, surveillance studies, legal theory, socio-legal studies, planning law, environmental law, and land law.

Winner of the IAJS Book Award 2023 for Best Applied Book This fascinating volume uses psychoanalytic theory to explore how political subjectivity comes about within the context of global catastrophe, via the emergence of collective individuations through trans-subjectivity. Serving as a jumping-off point to address the structural linkage between collective catastrophe, subject, group, and political transformation, trans-subjectivity is the central tenet of the book, conceptualized as a psyche-social dynamic that initiates social transformation and which may be enhanced in the clinical setting. Each chapter investigates a distinct manifestation of trans-subjectivity in relation to various real-world events as they manifest clinically in the analytic couple and within group processes. The author builds her conceptual arguments through a psyche/social reading of Kristeva’s theory of signifiance (sublimation), Lacan’s 1945 essay on collective logic, Heidegger’s secular reading of the apostle Paul’s Christian revolution, and Žižek, Badiou and Jung’s conception of the neighbor within a differentiated humanity. The book features clinical illustrations, an auto-ethnographic study of the emergence of an AIDS clinic, an accounting of trans-subjectivity in Black revolutionary events in the U.S., and an examination of some expressions of care that arose in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychoanalysis, Catastrophe & Social Action is important reading for psychoanalysts, psycho-dynamic based therapists, psychologists, group therapists, philosophers and political activists.

Surgery is a craft specialty: ‘doing’ in response to what is seen, felt and anticipated. The potent odours and the raw images of flesh, elicit strong sensations and responses in the here-and-now or ‘thisness’ (haecceities) of practice. These experiences, trigger a world of affects and senses that can disturb or rupture familiar or established ways of thinking and knowing. This book attempts to articulate these emotional complexities of learning and practice by exploring affective encounters with the uncertainty of medical events. Employing a practice based inquiry, grounded in philosophical notions of affect and related concepts, real stories of actual practice are analysed and theorised to examine how events of clinical practice come to matter or become meaningful to surgeons, potentially disclosing new or modified capacities to see, think, understand and act. The philosophical writings of Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon and Brian Massumi inform the exploration. The critical discussions of this book are relevant for healthcare professionals, medical educators, practitioners and researchers interested in its main exploration: the affective conditions that emerge from disturbances in practice and their power to shape, construct and transform how professionals understand their practice and function within it.

A vital response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this volume connects the neoliberal underpinnings of the pandemic to the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. By positioning the worst outcomes of the COVID-19 crisis in terms of neoliberal normativity, contributors argue that we need to understand the pandemic rhizomatically. Construed as an event that deterritorializes the globe, the crisis of the pandemic contains within it the potential for creating new assemblages, alliances, and solidarities to offset the power of the state in building regimes of exclusion, insulation and control. Deleuzo-Guattarian attention towards non-human life finds new meaning in the context of the virus, and our understanding of what constitutes life and inorganic life. Crisis, capitalism, and revolution are read anew through the pandemic and core Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts help to situate the proliferation of new models of mutual aid, sustainability, and care in the context of anti-capitalist critique.

This volume brings together selected papers from the 2021 IAJS conference focusing on Jungian psychology’s place within the broader human science field, with contributions providing an interdisciplinary examination of fields such as psychoanalysis, feminism, critical thought, and eco-psychology. The historical foundations of Jungian thought in phenomenology, hermeneutics, the significance of imagination, and the body’s genetics open the book with outstanding essays from both renowned and aspiring new scholars. Chapters highlighting matters of current social, political, and ecological considerations shed light on the intersections between Jungian psychology and much contemporary thought in these fields. The healing process takes center stage in the last part of the book, which will interest readers involved with the broader psychotherapy field. With rigorous and scholarly contributions from a variety of international figures in analytical psychology, this book will be of great interest to all Jungian and depth psychology scholars, students, and analysts in training, as well as readers in the broader human science psychology field interested in current Jungian psychology and phenomenology.

Winner of the Theoretical Category of the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize for best books published in 2016 Psychoanalysis Beyond the End of Metaphysics offers a new paradigm approach which advocates reengaging the importance of metaphysics in psychoanalytic theorizing. The emergence of the relational trend has witnessed a revitalizing influx of new ideas, reflecting a fundamental commitment to the principle of dialogue. However, the transition towards a more pluralistic discourse remains a work in progress, and those schools of thought not directly associated with the relational shift continue to play only a marginal role. In this book, Robin S. Brown argues that for contemporary psychoanalysis to more adequately reflect a clinical ethos of pluralism, the field must examine the extent to which a theoretical commitment to the notion of relationship can grow restrictive. Suggesting that in the very effort to negotiate theoretical biases, psychoanalytic practice may occlude a more adequate recognition of its own evolving assumptions, Brown proposes that the profession’s advance requires a return to first principles. Arguing for the fundamental role played by faith in supporting the emergence of consciousness, this work situates itself at the crossroads of relational, Jungian, and transpersonal approaches to the psyche. Psychoanalysis Beyond the End of Metaphysics will be of significant interest to all psychodynamically oriented clinicians, alongside scholars of depth psychology and the philosophy of mind. It will also be helpful to advanced and postgraduate students of psychoanalysis seeking to orient themselves in the field at present.

This book discusses collaborative research as both a product of social and epistemic control, and as a process of dealing with it. It offers fresh multi-disciplinary perspectives on old questions that are gaining new urgency with the rise of participatory, transdisciplinary and transformative research. The volume addresses the complexity of collaborative research at the interface of science, policy and society and sheds light on a common dilemma: researchers and their collaborators tackling issues that require political and knowledge-based control. At the same time, collaborative research that involves diverse publics is difficult to predict or regulate. By examining the interplay of power and knowledge in these collaborations, the book offers insights into how researchers navigate the dilemma of social and epistemic control. This exploration is crucial for understanding the politics of transdisciplinarity. Featuring contributions from various fields including transdisciplinary sustainability studies, science and technology studies, policy analysis, participatory research and more, the book discusses different methodologies, practices, theories, and adaptations in response to the control dilemmas inherent in collaborative research to offer a deeper understanding of the nuanced relationship between power and knowledge within collaborative research. The Politics of Transdisciplinarity will be a key resource for the reflexive researcher working with collaborative approaches at the interface of science, policy and society. It was originally published as a special issue of Social Epistemology.

Joddy Murray, in “Kinematic Rhetoric,” puts forward a theory of rhetoric that adds the elements of movement, sound, image, affect and duration to traditional accounts of digital, visual and multimodal rhetorics. His concept of “time-affect” images provides a complex and nuanced theory for composing that builds upon his earlier concept of “nondiscursive texts.” By turning to Deleuze’s work on cinema, Murray presents the “time-affect image,” which “generates" and amplifies affectivity through duration and motion, and is the key concept in this rhetorical theory. Motion, he argues, creates meaning that is independent of the content and, like all images, carries with it the potential for persuasion through the affective domain.