Michel Serres Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by Rong-Fu Mao(毛榮富)
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- Literary Theory, Michel Serres
- by Kieran Murphy
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- Electromagnetism, Epistemology, History of Science, Gaston Bachelard

This is the introduction to a symposium comprising four papers examining the relations between law, culture and things. They inquire into human links with the material world. These links are mediated through technology which, in its many forms, enables humans to fulfil material needs. Tools and their social organisation provide food, clothing, shelter and communication. Technologies can be categorised as 'hard', involving manufacture and transport; 'soft' information and communication technologies; and 'wet' technologies of human sustenance, such as food production and preparation.
This collection of papers examines the use of soft technology in law (in record-keeping and artificial intelligence), as well as law as a means of directing the uses of technologies that impinge on the natural environment (ecological jurisprudence) and the human body (nutrition and parenting).
The project emphasises the importance of applying theoretical and empirical analysis to practical technological issues, because only through understanding all aspects of the relations between technology, humans and the environment can we identify problems and find solutions: political, cultural, ethical and theoretical. This collection aims to show how applying theory and research to practice can identify the sources of these issues and propose solutions.

- by Richard Mohr and +3
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- Material Culture Studies, Socio-legal studies, Michel Serres, Technology and Society

One could argue that the greatest challenge for the philosophy of education today is to stake its claim amidst the increasing prominence and competitive nature of evidence-based and profit-motivated theories of education. On one side of this point of contention are philosophies of education that owe their heritage to the analytical and empiricist mindset, on the other are those that may be derived from what can be broadly termed continental philosophy and the specific endeavour to develop theory. In the contemporary, globalised situation, where the philosophy of education needs to be appropriate for non-European and non-‘developed’ milieux, the demand to find alternative modes of enquiry is more palpable than ever.

- by Joff P N Bradley and +1
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- Philosophy, Education, Educational Research, Continental Philosophy
- by Pieter Lemmens
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- Philosophy, Water, Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

Een interessant aspect aan sport is dat het de mens toont in beweging. Waar beweging bij veel andere activiteiten slechts begeleidend lijkt te zijn, zet sport het lichamelijke, plotselinge en onvoorspelbare van beweging in de schijnwerpers. Sport laat zien hoe onze gedachten en gevoelens ontstaan vanuit ons bewegende lichaam. Hoe we ons voelen en hoe we waarnemen hangt nauw samen met hoe we bewegen.

- by Aldo Houterman
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- Sport Psychology, Stoicism, Philosophy of the Emotions, Michel Serres

This paper originated from lectures and dialogue with Michel Serres at Stanford University. It presents a confrontation with hermeneutics that rely on symbolism, and offer perspectives directed toward a hermeneutic founded more in a biological, phenomenological, and arguably more experientially realistic understanding of apprehension as mediated by our senses.

- by Michael LeBaron
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- Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Languages and Linguistics, Hermeneutics
- by Emilie Hache
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- Political Ecology, Michel Serres, Immanuel Kant, Moral Philosophy
- by Jessica Güsken
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- Aesthetics, Media and Cultural Studies, Textiles, Synaesthesia

After the fall of the Soviet Union, market capitalism replaced socialism in Eastern Europe. Supposedly, the new economic logic would allocate resources impartially, allowing the possibility of prosperity for those who worked hard. What happened instead is that citizens from Russia to Romania, Serbia to Albania poured billions of dollars into pyramid schemes advertising astronomical returns. These investment vehicles never explained how they would produce such wealth. In fact, the leaders commonly employed religious rhetoric to convince people to simply have faith and turn over their cash. When the schemes inevitably crashed, riots broke out. Following Michael Taussig’s work with newly proletarianized workers in South America, anthropologists like Katherine Verdery and Jean and John Comaroff have documented how magic and the occult always accompany the cool calculus of modern life. A baker’s dozen of humanities scholars have now brought that insight to the fields of literature, histo...

- by Michael Saler
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- Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Magic, Friedrich Nietzsche

This article highlights an intersection between the science fiction of
Neal Stephenson and the science philosophy of Michel Serres. As
two of the most prolific contemporary advocates of the
communication between literature and science, Serres and
Stephenson employ permutations of the trickster figure as a
potent lens on the epistemological transformations that occur
when boundaries are crossed and static systems perturbed.
Allegorizing the birth of science and rational consciousness as the
intervention of a trickster, Stephenson finds in hackers and
couriers the same generative force that Serres associates with the
Greek god Hermes and the figure of the parasite. With particular
attention to Stephenson’s postcyberpunk novel Snow Crash (1992)
and Serres’ Hermes series (1969–1980), the concept of the trickster
will be explored as both a personification of the kinship between
creation mythologies, information theory, anthropology, and
modern physics and as the template for a productive
transdisciplinary mode of cultural inquiry.

- by Moritz Ingwersen
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- Media Studies, Michel Serres, Science Fiction, Media Theory
- by Lars Gertenbach
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- Sociology, Social Sciences, Political Science, History of Social Sciences

Artikel voor het themanummer 'Sportfilosofie' van Filosofie-Tijdschrift

- by Aldo Houterman
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- Embodied Cognition, Michel Serres, Philosophy of Sport

Bruno Latour ist ein französischer Anthropologe, Soziologe und Philosoph. Seit 2013 ist er Professor an der London School of Economics and Political Science und gehört gegenwärtig zu den populärsten Vertretern der Wissenschaftsforschung.
Ziel dieser wissenschaftlichen Hausarbeit soll es sein, die von Bruno Latour in dem Essay „Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie“ verfassten Argumente und eigentümliche Begrifflichkeiten darzustellen. Die leitende Forschungsfrage richtet sich auf den Gegenstand der Moderne als Epoche, insbesondere auf der Ebene einer metaphorischen Funktion als begreifbar machendes Element in der Rekonstruktion von vergangener Wirklichkeit.

Is een ‘sociologie van de natuur’ mogelijk? Dat wil zeggen: een sociologisch begrip dat verder reikt dan culturele representaties van die natuur. Dat is de vraag die uit het werk van Michel Serres naar voren komt. Onze confrontatie met de klimaatproblematiek, toont volgens hem aan dat we onze conditie niet meer kunnen begrijpen zonder ook de wereld zelf in ogenschouw te nemen. We moeten overgaan van een ‘sociaal contract’, met enkel oog voor mensen, naar een ‘contract met de natuur’, waarin ook de dingen een plaats krijgen. Deze thesis tracht de mogelijkheid van zo’n contract met de natuur te onderzoeken aan de hand van de wetenschapssociologie. Ook wetenschappelijke feiten lijken immers te ontsnappen aan een sociologische analyse, want ze worden gekenmerkt door de afwezigheid van elke sociale verkleuring. Ware theorieën verspreiden zich omdat ze rationeel zijn, terwijl onware theorieën hoogstens aanhang vinden door sociale factoren, zoals ideologie. In deel II wordt ingegaan op het ‘sterke programma’ binnen de wetenschapssociologie, dat deze asymmetrie bekritiseert. Daartegenover plaatst het een symmetrieprincipe: ware en onware theorieën moeten op gelijkwaardige wijze verklaard worden. De inhoud van de wetenschap staat zo ook open voor sociologische analyse. Doch de natuur zelf wordt nog buitengesloten, aangezien het finaal om sociale representaties van de natuur gaat, een natuur die zelfs niet voor de wetenschap toegankelijk is. Een volgende stap wordt gezet in het werk van de Franse socioloog Bruno Latour en staat centraal in deel III: hij neemt zowel mensen als niet-mensen, maatschappij en natuur, op in zijn analyse. Vanuit een reeks wetenschapssociologische studies stelt hij dat het probleem de begrippen maatschappij/natuur zelf zijn, aangezien deze zo worden ingevuld dat ze elkaar bij voorbaat uitsluiten. Als men de wetenschapspraktijk echt wil begrijpen, moet men realiseren dat het steeds gaat om hybride vormen: noch natuur noch maatschappij, maar beide tegelijk. Het zijn noch subjecten noch objecten, maar ‘quasiobjecten’.
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In deel IV wordt gekeken hoe Latour dit vervolgens toepast op de klimaatkwestie. Zijn stelling is dat het binnen de politieke ecologie niet gaat om het feit dat men nu eindelijk de natuur opneemt in de samenleving, maar eerder dat men beseft dat dit klassiek begrip van de natuur onhoudbaar is. De klimaatcrisis toont dat we de natuur niet meer kunnen opnemen als een externe, passieve factor. We worden daarentegen geconfronteerd met een enorme wetenschappelijke onzekerheid: wat de natuur juist zal doen, en uit wat ze juist bestaat, is niet meer duidelijk. Het onderscheid tussen natuur en maatschappij kan men dus niet meer maken, althans niet op voorhand. Daartegenover plaats Latour het idee van een ‘collectief’. De identiteit van dit collectief is niet bij voorbaat gegeven, kan zowel mensen als niet-mensen bevatten, en wordt via een reeks procedures bepaald binnen wat Latour het ‘parlement van de dingen’ noemt. Latours ‘parlement van de dingen’ kan beschouwd worden als een invulling van Serres’ contract met de natuur. In die zin is een sociologie van de natuur mogelijk, maar enkel via de herdenking van het begrippenpaar maatschappij/natuur. De identiteit van de natuur (en van de maatschappij) ligt nooit op voorhand vast, maar moet bepaald worden binnen het collectief waartegen het zich ook altijd kan verzetten. In die zin, is het wellicht gepaster te spreken van een sociologie van het onbehangen de natuur.

- by Massimiliano Simons
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- Michel Serres, Sociology of Science, Bruno Latour, Wetenschapsfilosofie
- by Jessica Bardsley
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- Feminist Theory, Historiography, Feminist Philosophy, Luce Irigaray

Os ateliers, seminários e encontros realizados com Claude Ledoux se inscreveram no âmbito de atividades acadêmicas desenvolvidas na Unicamp e na Usp na área de Análise Musical e compreenderam: Reflexão sobre a Análise Musical relacionada a tradições populares; Impacto do conhecimento de tradições populares no ato da composição musical; Claude Debussy e as tradições do Sudeste Asiático; Ligeti e a influência de músicas subsaarianas; Feldmann, tradições do Oriente-Médio e filosofias orientais; Scelsi, Murail e Harvey: interesse mutuo em músicas tibetanas, mongólicas e outros rituais budistas; Eötvös e Kurtag em relação às tradições da Europa Central; Claude Ledoux: influência das músicas da Índia do Norte e Indonésia; Relações com etnomusicologia e improvisação musical em extensão às reflexões analíticas; Levy Strauss e a Sinfonia de Berio; Relação entre música e texto em Berio e Kurt Schwitters.

- by José Augusto Mannis
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- Popular Music, Oral Tradition In Popular Music, Popular Culture, Edgar Morin

This thesis consists of a series of extensive projects which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. It is a role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a... more

- by Otto von Busch
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- Critical Theory, Parasitology, Sociology of Religion, Political Philosophy
- by Jessica Güsken
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- Aesthetics, History of the Senses, Michel Serres, Phenomenology of Touch

Peut-être faut-il entre vrais frères et sœurs invoquer de faux amis linguistiques pour mieux comprendre la place de la femme dans la société maçonnique en rendant celle-ci definitly et actually effective selon l’acception des mots anglo-saxons associée à une signification apparentée dans notre langue, c’est-à-dire absolument, définitvement et immédiatement, réellement disponible.

- by Albert Galoy
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- Religion, Consumerism, Michel Serres, Freemasonry

Una nuova forma di incredulità, diceva Bernard Stigler in riferimento a quella che chiamava "immagine discreta", ma questa incredulità si dovrà pur esercitare su un corpo.
Proprio su questo gioca Maisie Cousins (n. Londra 1992 – vivente), giovane fotografa inglese, della quale analizziamo un corpus di sette fotografie selezionate dalla sua produzione.
A questo scopo, approfondiremo il concetto di visione aptica, per disambiguare il meccanismo attraverso il quale vista e tatto si influenzano. Ci concentreremo inoltre sulla dimensione forica che attraversa questo insieme complesso ed avanzeremo ipotesi in merito all’effetto di senso che tutto ciò produce.
Proprio in merito alla connivenza di sintassi sensoriali che caratterizza queste immagini, in particolare le prime quattro del nostro corpus (figg. 1-4, §§3-5), specifichiamo che ci concentreremo sul rapporto che la sintassi del tatto intrattiene con la sostanza visiva: anche se le immagini del corpus sarebbero passibili di un’analisi relativa, per esempio, alla sintassi dell’olfatto, ci limiteremo, per esigenze redazionali, a prendere in considerazione solo vista e tatto.
Per quanto invece riguarda le ultime tre foto (figg. 5-7) (che compongono un “Trittico”, §6), ritorneremo specificatamente sul problema dello sguardo.
Infatti, pur sempre in una coerenza tematica e poetica con le altre, in queste gli effetti percettivi prenderanno avvio da una difficoltà di iconismo visivo primario.

Der Titel des Themenhefts – Bachmanns „Ein Wildermuth“. Kulturtechniken, Medien und Recht –führt in nuce zur inhaltlichen und theoretischen Ausrichtung dieser Ausgabe von Sprache und Literatur 48,2 (2019). Bachmanns Erzählung, veröffentlicht im Erzählband Das dreißigste Jahr (1961), zählt sicherlich zu den von der Bachmann-Forschung vernachlässigten Werken der Autorin. Das Ziel des Themenheftes darin, die Verbindung zwischen Recht und Literatur sowie den Zusammenhang zwischen Techniken der Wahrheitsfindung und Medien und Dingen des Rechts zu untersuchen.

- by Rupert Gaderer and +1
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- Law and Literature, Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour
- by Rupert Gaderer
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- Literature, Digital Media, Media History, Michel Serres

Lexi's MA Thesis, "Bodies Bear Traces: Noise, Power and Perpetual Disintegration" is an in-depth analysis of the noise music scene's connection at levels of content, context and form with sadomasochism, as a sensational analysis of the body as a locus of power relations, first of all through the lens of Deleuzo-Nietzschean eternal recurrence and Foucauldian genealogy in discussion with Elizabeth Freeman's theories of queer temporality and historiography. As the paper progresses, it later ruminates on Foucault's statement in "Nietzsche/Genealogy/History" that "the body is a...volume in perpetual disintegration," whose poetical paradox of eternity and entropy echoes not only noise musician Romain Perrot AKA Vomir's "Harsh Noise Wall Manifesto," but also Michel Serres' continuation of information theory, and the "cosmic pessimism" and "demontology" of Eugene Thacker. Accordingly, the phusis of power causes us to reflect on the notion of governmentality in an ultimately ungovernable universe, and the ways in which haptic / corporeal engagement with as ungovernable an artistic force such as harsh noise may provide new sensational bodily responses to power's implementation on the subject.

- by Lexi C M K Turner
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- Music, Musicology, Information Theory, Queer Theory

This is an expanded version of a paper originally given at the English and Theatre Studies research seminar at Melbourne University in May 2015, and it retains its oral tone. My intention both for the original paper and for this expanded version is to provide a first introduction to the work and thought of Michel Serres. I discuss how Serres’s work has been received in the French-speaking and English-speaking worlds to date, briefly highlight the different areas in which his thought is making a decisive contribution today, and then offer reflections on what it is that characterises his writing as a whole. I finish by examining some of his recent thought in more detail, specifically his recent elaboration of an econarratology around the idea of the "Great Story" of the universe, opening the way, for the first time in history, to develop a truly universal humanism.

- by Christopher Watkin
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- French Studies, Contemporary French Philosophy, Michel Serres, Biosemiotics

Philosophy already has a long history of coming to terms with AI. But if the future of the concept is indeed inseparable from artificial languages and ubiquitous computing, then philosophy must also be able to understand and rewrite its own history in this unnatural light. To this end, I distinguish two manners in which modern philosophy has pursued the artificial cultivation of intelligence. The first is Hegelian. Recently, Yuk Hui and Reza Negarestani have pointed to the affinity between the Hegelian notion of absolute spirit and the functioning of intelligence found in cybernetics and systems theory, as well as in cognitive science. As technology has become our destiny, this leads them to the problem of the continued relevance of humans to the history of a general self-authorizing intelligence. By contrast, I propose to bluntly identify intelligence itself with a rather different sense for relevance, that is, for singularity. Philosophically speaking, this identification reaches back to the proto-structuralist system of Leibniz, which aims for universal communication. Leibniz’s many inventions of formal languages, from the binary system and the universal characteristic to magic and mechanical calculating devices, constitute a proto-AI that functions as the operative code of an inclusive civility. My thesis is the following: if Hegel offered the first grand narrative of the recursive self-critique of common sense immediacy in the form of artificial good sense, Leibnizian cosmotechnics instead bet on a proto-cybernetic reason that contributes to the distributive composition of an unnatural common sense, all the while protecting multiplicity against its collectivization by a self-naturalizing good sense.

- by Sjoerd van Tuinen
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- Artificial Intelligence, Continental Philosophy, Hegel, Michel Serres

Review of this book by Astrid Lorange for Leonardo Reviews

- by Edith Doove
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- American Literature, Gertrude Stein, Michel Serres

Der französische Philosoph Michel Serres ist am 1. Juni 2019 verstorben. Er war Mitglied der Académie française und hat mehr als 50 Monographien zu unterschiedlichsten Themen veröffentlicht. Sein Denken ist durch eine große Vielfalt gekennzeichnet und die Vielfalt selbst ist immer wieder Thema seiner Texte. »Das vielfältige Denken. Oder: Das Vielfältige denken« versucht, die Ansätze des Denkens von Michel Serres in ihrem Facettenreichtum dem Leser nahe zu bringen.
Aus unterschiedlichen wissenschaftlichen Perspektiven wird die Vielfältigkeit beleuchtet. Thematische Akzente sind u.a.: Gemenge und Gemische, das Parasitäre, Engel und Boten, die Rolle der Musik und die der Kommunikation, der Mensch in den Netzen, in seiner Körperlichkeit und Leiblichkeit sowie sein Verhältnis zur Natur. Außerdem werden die Berührungen mit anderen Philosophen thematisiert, von Henri Bergson über die phänomenologische Tradition bis zu Michel Foucault. Zu den Autoren der einzelnen Beiträge gehören neben Philosophen auch Literaturwissenschaftler, Medienwissenschaftler, Sozialwissenschaftler und Juristen.

- by Reinhold Clausjürgens and +2
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- Contemporary French Philosophy, Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, Virtue
- by Michael Gardiner
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- Music, Music Theory, Medieval Philosophy, Theology

Michel Serres’s Le Parasite is a foundational text not only for the understanding of Serres’s own imposing and timely thought but also for key debates in contemporary posthumanism, object oriented thought, new materialisms, ecology, ontology and politics.
However, the reader seeking to come to terms with the book faces a three-fold problem. To begin with, Serres dialogues with a forbidding array of intertexts ranging from ancient Greek and Roman literature and philosophy through medieval and early modern French to more recent texts. Without a knowledge of key passages from these intertexts it is simply impossible to appreciate Serres’s argument, an argument which is, itself, quite intentionally parasitic on the texts with which it interacts.
The second problem for the reader is that, although both the original French and subsequent English translation of Le Parasite contain a list of intertexts as an appendix bearing the title “Histoires, animaux” (“Stories, animals”), the list is incomplete. Thirdly, and to compound the problem, Serres does not systematically mention the particular text with which he is interacting at any given point, nor indeed that he is interacting with a particular text at all. It is left to the reader to pick up the allusions and reactions for herself. The English translation provides footnotes to some but not all of these references, but the reader is nevertheless left to track down the intertexts and read the relevant passages. This leaves a great deal of work to do in order to access and appreciate the brilliant and important moves that Serres is making in Le Parasite.
The current document has been prepared to save some – perhaps most – of that extra effort. The reader will find herein not only a comprehensive list of Serres’s intertexts but also both French and English versions of the key passages with which he interacts. Each passage given below is accompanied by references to the pages of the French (Grasset, 1980) and English (Minnesota Press, 2007) editions of Le Parasite where Serres alludes to it or mentions it directly.

- by Christopher Watkin
- •
- Posthumanism, Michel Serres, Object Oriented Ontology, New Materialism

Le but du présent article est de mettre en lumière la notion de ‹corps mêlés›introduite par Michel Serres dans Les Cinq Sens au moment de la description de la notion de peau. Il s’agit ici de situer la place et la portée de cette notion dans l’ensemble de la pensée philosophique de l’académicien français. Les premiers ouvrages de Michel Serres, à savoir ceux des années 1960 jusqu’aux années 1980, l’ont fait connaître dans le domaine de
l’épistémologie. En revanche, le fait qu’il ait entrepris dans le même temps l’analyse du concept de sensation est beaucoup moins connu, comme le prouve le nombre insuffisant d’études académiques consacrées à cette problématique, les liens reliant celle-ci avec les autres préoccupations de l’oeuvre de Michel Serres restant par conséquent ignorés.
L'intérêt du présent article se situe précisément dans la découverte de ces liens à travers l'analyse de la notion de ‹corps mêlés› dont Michel Serres se sert pour décrire la notion de peau. De cette façon, la peau apparaît comme le lieu des ‹corps mêlés› par lesquels le sujet et l’objet se mélangent. Mais que veut signifier Michel Serres en recourant ainsi à cette notion méconnue et a priori difficile d'accès ? Pour éclairer cela, nous nous concentrons ici sur la notion primordiale dans l’oeuvre de Michel Serres de ‹quasi-objet› notamment traitée dans Le Parasite et qui, en soulignant l’état potentiel du sujet, dépasse en définitive la dichotomie de la philosophie traditionnelle entre le sujet et l’objet. Finalement, le présent article montre ainsi que le lieu des ‹corps mêlés› constitue l’état potentiel du sujet, mis en exergue par Michel Serres.

- by Yuiko AGATA
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- Actor Network Theory, Michel Serres
- by David Webb
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- Michel Serres, Multiplicity

As carbon surrounds the Earth's critical zone, this book takes the journey from communities in war zones through safe European hamlets to witness the material violence of current law and how communities and legal activists are creating and reviving alternative legal regimes and ethical practices that respond to the historical juncture that humanity, Earth and law currently face. This book argues that law needs to shift from its current emphasis on a discourse based on individual and property rights and into the legal recognition of relations: both material and social. From the solidity of Earth to the sovereignty of soil to the dissolution of dirt, Bronwyn Lay draws together legal histories and philosophies around the unifying concept of juris materiarum: laws that recognise the connections between humanity and its habitat. This is increasingly urgent in the age of ecocide where great violence is being committed around the world on an unprecedented scale, but the law remains silent and populations are frustrated that essential relations are being abused and destroyed. A new theory and understanding of violence needs to evolve beyond anthropocentric limits and draw from ancient and modern jurisprudences that recognise the essential truth that humanity lives within Earth, Soil and Dirt. It is law's obligation and vocation to protect these relationships from harm.

- by Bronwyn Lay
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- Critical Theory, Environmental Law, Environmental Studies, Ecological Anthropology
- by Matthew J Pereira
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- Early Christianity, Michel Serres, Origen of Alexandria

This paper considers the intersection between past and future, where we encounter now, in what the editors of this issue have called the technophysics of space, a peculiar “crisis” with regard to remembering the Enlightenment legacy of critical thinking in relation to civic subjectivity – a political status of subjectivity that grants rights to citizens insofar as they subject to a manner of service to the public, accept their duties in order to be granted rights – and among those duties is the famous Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding (Sapere aude). I will explore how the perspective of relating reason to the mechanic´s cunning and to the intellectual´s criticality, as a triangular relation, can open up, in its active and restless interplay, a “Discrete Space of Cunning Reason”. Such a notion of space will be projected upon the digital, in order to render apparent a kind of “continentality” (rather than “territoriality”) within the oceans of data, and the rising mass of contingencies and possible correlations this information flood is confronting us with.

- by Vera Bühlmann
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- Algebra, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Language, Political Philosophy