Sunday, August 29, 2010

DeLanda

Levi has organized a reading group around DeLanda's A New Philosophy of Society. I had thought of joining, but I'm a little worried of over-extending myself. However, it looks to be really interesting. I read DeLanda's book when it first came out, and I will probably occasionally add things to the discussion. A very early encounter of DeLanda's War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (I read it either the summer before my junior year, or the summer before my senior year of undergrad) was part of a weird mixture of things I was reading as an undergrad that really lent itself to my general anti-anthropocentric realism. DeLanda is also the reason I read Braudel's Capitalism and Civilization series, which are a lot of fun and very useful.

This also reminds me that there is a DeLanda book I haven't read yet, Deleuze: History and Science. If anyone here has already read it, I'd be interested in hearing feedback. I'd also be interested in a table of contents... . Also, at one point DeLanda was writing a book on the phenomenology of animals (what I saw looked very inspired by Uexkull), anyone know any updates on that front?

Speaking of Uexkull, Wolfe's Posthumanities series is going to be releasing shortly his A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with his A Theory of Meaning. Both of them have already been translated and released into English, but it will still be nice to have them together in one affordable and in print volume. I've said it before, Uexkull is important and interesting, but I also would like for philosophers to maybe know something about the more contemporary scientific work, rather than going back a century for basis of their thought.