Michel Serres: A Critical Introduction

Description

Introduces the interdisciplinary importance of Michel Serres (1930-2019) across the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences Author of some 70 books and an 'immortal' member of the Académie française, Michel Serres has produced an inimitable cross-disciplinary body of work. His scholarship contributes to current debates in post-humanism, object-oriented ontology, ecological thought and the environmental humanities. Chris Watkin provides the first introduction to the full breadth of Serres' work. Each chapter considers Serres' importance for one key contemporary debate, critically situating his well-known passages and books in their broader conceptual and intellectual context. You will discover that Serres' famous account of the quasi-object and his 'natural contract' are just the beginning of a sustained series of explorations encompassing philosophy, literary criticism, the sciences, technology, religion, and art -- all as participants in the same fundamental structures of communication. List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations INTRODUCTION: MICHEL SERRES TODAY PART I 1. HOW SERRES THINKS: LEIBNIZ, PLATO, DESCARTES 2. SPACE AND TIME 3. SERRES’S STYLE PART II 4. LANGUAGE 5. OBJECTS 6. ECOLOGY ENVOI Bibliography Index