All posts filed under: abstraction

Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Pragmatics

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A Thousand Plateaus / abstract machine / abstraction / assemblages / guattari / machinic unconscious / pragmatics / redundancy / rhizome / Schizoanalysis

Until Marxism, capitalist political economy has also pretended for a long time to pass as the general grammar of all economy, but linguistics still has not found its Marx and Engels who would reset it on its feet. –Guattari, L’Inconscient Machinique, p.30 fn. 14. The sign is a position of desire; but the first sings are the territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies. And if one wants to call this inscription in naked […]

Questions for an Ontology of Aesthetics

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abstraction / art / becoming / expressivity / history / imagination / light / ontology / Thought / transubstantiation

Are we escaping or returning, gathering together or tearing apart? We find ourselves suddenly in need of a post-conceptual way of thinking. Perhaps this problem of art and machines has always already begun to make itself felt. We are discovering that its appearance at this critical juncture signifies a bifurcation point, a new kind of possibility. Imperceptibly we have moved beyond imagination into the abstract, from dreams to decoding.

Translation: Alain Badiou and the Concept of the Model: Introduction to a Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics

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abstraction / badiou / Carnap / Dialectical Materialism / epistemology / French Translation / ideology / marxism / mathematics / meta-theory / model / philosophy of science / Quine / Untranslated Theory

The following is the first three sections of Alain Badiou’s first theoretical book Le Concept de modèle: introduction à une épistémologie matérialiste des mathématiques. Paris: Maspero, 1968. p. 7-17 and is an original translation by Taylor Adkins [10/17/07]. Editor’s Advertisement: The beginning of this text continues a talk given on April 29, 1968 by Alain Badiou within the framework of the “Course of philosophy for scientists” given to the National university. This continuation should have […]

Translation: Francois Laruelle’s Beyond the Power Principle

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abstraction / French Translation / Laruelle / non-Marxism / non-philosophy / Politics / power / Uncategorized / Untranslated Theory

The following is the preface from Francois Laruelle’s Beyond the Power Principle pp. 1-9 and is an original translation by Taylor Adkins 10/09/07. Stylistic Caution A: But if everyone knew this most would be harmed by it. You yourself call these opinions dangerous for those exposed to danger, and yet you express them in public? B: I write in such a way that neither the mob, nor the populi, nor the parties of any kind […]

Translation: Simondon and the Physico-Biological Genesis of the Individual

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abstraction / French Translation / individuation / metastability / morphology / ontogenesis / ontology / Simondon

Simondon, Gilbert. L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1964. Original Translation by Taylor Adkins. Chapter One: Form and Matter Section I—Foundations of the Hylemorphic Model: Technology of the Capture of Form 1. The Conditions of Individuation: pp. 27-39. The notions of form and matter can help solve the problem of individuation only if they are first compared to its position. So if by the contrast it was discovered that the […]