I hope people won't mind if follow Stuart Elden's lead and plug my forthcoming
book. Genealogies of Difference (University of Illinois Press, ISBN
#0252027078) should be available in the next few weeks. It is already on
Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. It can also be ordered directly from the press
(www.press.uillinois.edu).
This book is my Foucauldian and Deleuzean (admittedly more the
latter)-inspired romp through Western philosophy, which basically tries to
outline an ontology of difference by weaving together exploration of Hegel,
Nietzsche and contemporary critiques of dialectics with excursions into
ancient, early Christian and medieval philosophy. The aim of the work is to
show that what the rejection of metaphysical foundations needs to lead to is a
thinking of difference, and to flesh out what its corresponding ontology would
be.
Illinois Press is going to be making the book available for free download,
though I am not sure when this will happen. It's a way, they say, of boosting
paper sales. In any event, it's a way to increase exposure for the book. So
feel free to download if you'd prefer, but for those of you who are attached
to universities, if you could have your libraries order a copy or two I'd be
very grateful. And, hey, the book is only $29.95, which is I think a pretty
good price for a hardcover, and if I do say so myself, the cover art and
layout make it a really beautiful book.
I'm including the table of contents and the stuff from the inside and back
cover below.
Thanks for the use of your inbox spaces.
Nathan
Dr. Nathan Widder
Lecturer in Political Theory
University of Exeter
Department of Politics
Exeter EX4 4RJ
http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/politics/staff/widder/
MA in Critical Global Studies:
http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/school/ma/global.php
---------------------------------------
Genealogies of Difference combines critical engagements with modern and
postmodern theories of identity, difference, contingency, and time with
strategic forays into ancient, early Christian, and medieval philosophy.
Without losing sight of complex contributions from the past, Nathan Widder
provides the philosophical underpinnings for a politics and ethics of
difference crucial to our present day. Lucid and distinctive, this volume is
an important, in-depth contribution to contemporary debates on pluralism,
multiplicity, and community.
This deft study establishes the failure of Hegelian dialectics to adequately
come to terms with the problem of difference. Drawing from the works of
Nietzsche, Lyotard, Deleuze, Foucault, and Blanchot, Widder demonstrates the
need to rethink the nature of difference and the categories of thought that
have dominated Western philosophy. He then provides a keen exploration of
major and marginal figures and schools in the history of Western
thought-including Aristotle, Epicureanism, Augustine, Gnosticism, and medieval
Scholasticism-to illustrate the relevance and relation of these perspectives
to contemporary issues and thought.
Widder addresses the substantial body of theoretical discourse on difference
without neglecting the history of political thought or the contemporary
criticisms of the tradition. His genealogical endeavor develops a concept of
difference indispensable to a postmodern world of blurred boundaries and
hybrid forms that exceed our traditional categories of understanding.
"[Genealogies of Difference] seeks to show that the rejection of metaphysical
foundations lead neither to a postmodern ironism or skepticism nor to a
negative theology...A pertinent and instructive contribution to contemporary
thinking in the area of philosophy and political theory" -- Keith Ansell
Pearson, author of Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze
"Have you heard that the philosophy of difference is a modern or, even,
postmodern event? Nathan Widder puts that story to bed. This is genealogy in
the most productive sense of the word: a disaggregation of nostalgic
narratives that render the modern world fragmented and lost in order to spurt
the return to a time that never was" -- William E. Connolly, author of
Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
The Quest for Lost Time and Space
Force, Synthesis, and Event
A Question of Limits and Continuity: Aristotle, Epicureanism and the Logic of
Totality
The One and the Many: Augustine and Gnosticism
Reason and Faith: Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham
The Ethics of a Pluralism Made of Stolen Bits
Notes
Bibliography
Index
book. Genealogies of Difference (University of Illinois Press, ISBN
#0252027078) should be available in the next few weeks. It is already on
Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. It can also be ordered directly from the press
(www.press.uillinois.edu).
This book is my Foucauldian and Deleuzean (admittedly more the
latter)-inspired romp through Western philosophy, which basically tries to
outline an ontology of difference by weaving together exploration of Hegel,
Nietzsche and contemporary critiques of dialectics with excursions into
ancient, early Christian and medieval philosophy. The aim of the work is to
show that what the rejection of metaphysical foundations needs to lead to is a
thinking of difference, and to flesh out what its corresponding ontology would
be.
Illinois Press is going to be making the book available for free download,
though I am not sure when this will happen. It's a way, they say, of boosting
paper sales. In any event, it's a way to increase exposure for the book. So
feel free to download if you'd prefer, but for those of you who are attached
to universities, if you could have your libraries order a copy or two I'd be
very grateful. And, hey, the book is only $29.95, which is I think a pretty
good price for a hardcover, and if I do say so myself, the cover art and
layout make it a really beautiful book.
I'm including the table of contents and the stuff from the inside and back
cover below.
Thanks for the use of your inbox spaces.
Nathan
Dr. Nathan Widder
Lecturer in Political Theory
University of Exeter
Department of Politics
Exeter EX4 4RJ
http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/politics/staff/widder/
MA in Critical Global Studies:
http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/school/ma/global.php
---------------------------------------
Genealogies of Difference combines critical engagements with modern and
postmodern theories of identity, difference, contingency, and time with
strategic forays into ancient, early Christian, and medieval philosophy.
Without losing sight of complex contributions from the past, Nathan Widder
provides the philosophical underpinnings for a politics and ethics of
difference crucial to our present day. Lucid and distinctive, this volume is
an important, in-depth contribution to contemporary debates on pluralism,
multiplicity, and community.
This deft study establishes the failure of Hegelian dialectics to adequately
come to terms with the problem of difference. Drawing from the works of
Nietzsche, Lyotard, Deleuze, Foucault, and Blanchot, Widder demonstrates the
need to rethink the nature of difference and the categories of thought that
have dominated Western philosophy. He then provides a keen exploration of
major and marginal figures and schools in the history of Western
thought-including Aristotle, Epicureanism, Augustine, Gnosticism, and medieval
Scholasticism-to illustrate the relevance and relation of these perspectives
to contemporary issues and thought.
Widder addresses the substantial body of theoretical discourse on difference
without neglecting the history of political thought or the contemporary
criticisms of the tradition. His genealogical endeavor develops a concept of
difference indispensable to a postmodern world of blurred boundaries and
hybrid forms that exceed our traditional categories of understanding.
"[Genealogies of Difference] seeks to show that the rejection of metaphysical
foundations lead neither to a postmodern ironism or skepticism nor to a
negative theology...A pertinent and instructive contribution to contemporary
thinking in the area of philosophy and political theory" -- Keith Ansell
Pearson, author of Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze
"Have you heard that the philosophy of difference is a modern or, even,
postmodern event? Nathan Widder puts that story to bed. This is genealogy in
the most productive sense of the word: a disaggregation of nostalgic
narratives that render the modern world fragmented and lost in order to spurt
the return to a time that never was" -- William E. Connolly, author of
Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
The Quest for Lost Time and Space
Force, Synthesis, and Event
A Question of Limits and Continuity: Aristotle, Epicureanism and the Logic of
Totality
The One and the Many: Augustine and Gnosticism
Reason and Faith: Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham
The Ethics of a Pluralism Made of Stolen Bits
Notes
Bibliography
Index