This book offers a manifesto for a radical existentialism aiming to regenerate the place of the outside that contemporary theory underestimates. Neyrat calls this outside “atopia”: not utopia, a dreamt place out of the world where everything would be perfect, but atopia, the internal outside that is at the core of every being. Atopia is neither an object that an “object-oriented ontology” would be able to formalize, nor the matter that “new materialisms” could identify. Atopia is what constitutes the existence of any object or subject, its singularity or more precisely its “eccentricity.” Etymologically, to exist means “to be outside” and the book argues that every entity is outside, thrown in the world, wandering without any ontological anchor. In this regard, a radicalized existentialism does not privilege human beings (as Sartre and Heidegger did), but considers existence as a universal condition that concerns every being. It is important to offer a radical existentialism because the current denial of the outside is politically, and aesthetically, damaging. Only an atopian philosophy—a bizarre, extravagant, heretic philosophy—can care for our fear of the outside. For therapeutic element, a radical existentialism favors everything that challenges the compact immanence in which we are trapped, losing capacity to imagine political alternatives. To sustain these alternatives, the book identifies the atopia as a condition of the possibility to break immanence and analyze these breaks in human and animal subjectivity, language, politics and metaphysics.
Les mer
Critique of pure madness Book I: Toposophy 1.1 The undamaged and the contagious 1.2 Saturated immanence and transcendence x 1.3 Socratic divergence Book II: Theory of the trans-ject 2.1 Being-outside 2.2 Coalitions 2.3 Ab-solved freedom 2.4 Language and dis-joining 2.5 On the subject of animals Book III: The metaphysical proposition 3.1 The transgression of the principle of the excluded middle 3.2 The leap and the loop 3.3 The unlocatable 3.4 The madwoman of the out-of-place 3.5 Science(s), art, politics What cries out
Les mer
"Everything is in flux, as we are told over and over again. And yet, these are fluxes in which nothing ever really changes... Other thinkers have characterized globalized and financialized capitalism in this way; Neyrat sees it as a dilemma for critical thought as well... In a world where anything can be anyplace, and anything can switch places with anything else, philosophy must insist on its power to be, not everyplace, but noplace. It must never fit in, but always disturb its context, ... maintaining a relation with the very Outside that our dominant social, economic, and intellectual conditions seek to deny or suppress... Above all, Atopias is a work of ethics, exhorting us to recognize and find room for the many forms of existence with whom we share our planet." -- -from Steven Shaviro's Foreword
Les mer
Everything is in flux, as we are told over and over again. And yet, these are fluxes in which nothing ever really changes. . . . Other thinkers have characterized globalized and financialized capitalism in this way; Neyrat sees it as a dilemma for critical thought as well. . . . In a world where anything can be anyplace, and anything can switch places with anything else, philosophy must insist on its power to be, not everyplace, but noplace. It must never fit in, but always disturb its context, . . . maintaining a relation with the very Outside that our dominant social, economic, and intellectual conditions seek to deny or suppress. . . . Above all, Atopias is a work of ethics, exhorting us to recognize and find room for the many forms of existence with whom we share our planet.
Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780823277551
Publisert
2017-10-03
Utgiver
Vendor
Fordham University Press
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
128

Forfatter
Foreword by

Biographical note

Frederic Neyrat is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is editor of Alienocene, an online journal that charts the environmental humanities and contemporary theory. His first book in English (following thirteen in French) is Atopias: Manifesto for a Radical Existentialism (Fordham, 2018). Walt Hunter is Associate Professor of World Literature at Clemson University. He is co-translator of Frédéric Neyrat’s Atopias: Manifesto for a Radical Existentialism. Lindsay Turner is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of two collections of poetry and has translated books by Stéphane Bouquet, Éric Baratay, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Anne Dufourmantelle, Richard Rechtman, Ryoko Sekiguchi, and others. Steven Shaviro is DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University.