Collapse : Philosophical Research and Development

Explorations of Deleuze's work by pioneering thinkers from philosophy, aesthetics, music, and architecture.

A collection of explorations of the work of Gilles Deleuze by pioneering thinkers in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, music, and architecture. The volume also includes a previously untranslated early text by Deleuze and a short interview, along with a fascinating piece of vintage science fiction from one of his more obscure influences.

The contributors to this volume aim to clarify, from a variety of perspectives, Deleuze's contribution to philosophy: in what does his philosophical originality lie; what does he appropriate from other philosophers and how does he transform it? And how can the apparently disparate threads of his work to be “integrated”—What is the precise nature of the constellation of the aesthetic, the conceptual and the political proposed by Gilles Deleuze, and what are the overarching problems in which the numerous philosophical concepts “signed Deleuze” converge?

As an annex to the second volume of Collapse, this volume also include a full transcript of the workshop on “Speculative Realism” held in London in 2007.

Robin Mackay is a philosopher, Director of the UK arts organization Urbanomic, and Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University of London.

Robin Mackay is a philosopher, Director of the UK arts organization Urbanomic, and Associate Researcher at Goldsmiths University of London.

Quentin Meillassoux teaches philosophy at Université de Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne), and is author of After Finitude.

Florian Hecker is a German electroacoustic composer/sound artist,.

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII, Vincennes/Saint Denis. He published 25 books, including five in collaboration with Félix Guattari.

Éric Alliez is a philosopher and Professor at Université Paris 8 and at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. He is author of Capital Times, The Signature of the World: Or, What is Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy?, The Brain-Eye: New Histories of Modern Painting, and Wars and Capital, with Maurizio Lazzarato (Semiotext(e)), and coeditor of The Guattari Effect, and Spheres of Action: Art and Politics (MIT Press).

Jean-Claude Bonne is an art historian and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI–Arc in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of objects led to the development of object-oriented ontology. He is a central figure in the speculative realism trend in contemporary philosophy.

Quentin Meillassoux teaches philosophy at Université de Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne), and is author of After Finitude.