Semiotext(e) / Agentes Extranjeros Serie

The Utopie group was born in 1966 at Henri Lefebvre's house in the Pyrenees. The eponymous journal edited by Hubert Tonka brought together sociologists Jean Baudrillard, Rene Lourau, Catherine Cot, architects Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Antoine Stinco, and landscape architect Isabelle Auricoste. Over the next decade, both in theory and in practice, the group articulated a radical ultra-leftist critique of architecture, urbanism, and everyday life. Utopia Deferred collects all of the essays Jean Baudrillard published in Utopie in their original form as well as a recent interview with the author. These essays, torn from the headlines of the tumultuous decade following May 1968, surpass Marxism itself.

Groundbreaking essays that introduce Guattari's theories of schizo-analysis, in an expanded edition.

Die jahrhundertelange Konjunktur des Individuums gerät ins Wanken. Es beginnt das Zeitalter des Dividuellen. Die schlechte Nachricht von Gerald Raunigs Philosophie der Dividualität ist, dass sich das Dividuelle im maschinischen Kapitalismus vor allem als Verschärfung von Ausbeutung und Indienstnahme zeigt: In Algorithmen, Derivaten, Big Data und Social Media wirkt Dividualität als ausufernde Erweiterung von herrschaftlicher Teilung und Selbstzerteilung. Die gute Nachricht: Genau auf dem Terrain des Dividuellen wird auch eine neue Qualität von Widerstand möglich, als kritische Mannigfaltigkeit, molekulare Revolution und Con-division

A focused exploration of Baudrillard's understanding and use of alterity and otherness, a crucial theme that appears and reappears throughout his work as a whole.

An examination of new forms of alienation in our never-off, plugged-in culture-and a clarion call for a conspiracy of estranged people.

Focusing on the concept of speed as a transformative force, Paul Virilio's work examines its role in shaping civilization through technological advances linked to militarization. He argues that speed, rather than class or wealth, drives societal change, presenting a topological history of humanity's evolution. Drawing from various thinkers, Virilio's "technical vitalism" explores the implications of rapid advancements, including military technology and information systems, offering a critical perspective on their impact on human nature and society's future.

Characterizing it as a mythic discourse, Jean Baudrillard proceeds, in this brilliant essay, to dismantle the powerful, seductive figure of Michel Foucault.

Offering a radical new perspective, a leading theorist in the Italian postfordist movement delves into the complexities of the current international economic landscape. The book challenges conventional views and presents innovative ideas that aim to reshape our understanding of global economics, making it a significant contribution to contemporary economic theory.

Foucault's previously unpublished doctoral dissertation on Kant offers the definitive statement of his relationship to Kant and to the critical tradition of philosophy.

Often approached through their 'micropolitics of desire,' the joint works of Deleuze and Guattari are rarely part of the discussion when classical and contemporary problems of political thought come under scrutiny. Yet if we follow the trajectory from 'Anti-Oedipus' (1972) to 'A Thousand Plateaus' (1980), it becomes clear that these problems were redeveloped during a period of historical transition marked by the end of the wars of decolonization, the transformation of global capitalism, and by recombinations of the forces of collective resistance that were as deep as they were uncertain. In 'State and Politics,' Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc measures how Deleuze and Guattari engage with the upheavals of their time by confronting their thought with its main interlocutor, Marxism, with its epistemological field (historical materialism), with its critical program (the critique of political economy)

Virilio and Lotringer revisit their prescient book on the invisible war waged by technology against humanity since World War II.

Exploring the administration of deviant desire in specialized clinics, this report delves into how postmodern society grapples with the complexities of sexuality, often leading to overexposure. It raises provocative questions about the intersections of professional boundaries and personal arousal, prompting readers to consider the impact of patients' fantasies on their own sexual understandings. The book challenges conventional perspectives on desire and the ethics of sexual expression within clinical settings.

The short-lived grouping of architects, sociologists, and urbanists known as Utopie was active in Paris from 1967 to 1978. This book makes the groups diverse body of theoretical work accessible in English for the first time

Virilio discusses the relationship of war trauma and art and the failure of visual art to reinvent itself when confronted with technology.

"There was a question that had come to trouble me a bit earlier, once I had taken the first steps on this return journey to Reims... Why, when I have had such an intense experience of forms of shame related to class, shame in relation to the milieu in which I grew up, why, when once I had arrived in Paris and started meeting people from such different class backgrounds, I would often find myself lying about my class origins... why had it never occurred to me to take up this problem in a book?" Returning to Reims is a breathtaking account of one man's return to the town where he grew up after an absence of thirty years. It is a frank, fearlessly personal story of family, memory, identity and time lost. But it is also a sociologist's view of what it means to grow up working class and then leave that class; of inequality and shifting political allegiances in an increasingly divided nation. A phenomenon in France and a huge bestseller in Germany, Didier Eribon has written the defining memoir of our times.

"First published in France in 1973, Good Sex Illustrated gleefully deciphers the subtext of a popular sex education manual for children produced during that period. In so doing, Duvert mounts a scabrous and scathing critique of how deftly the "sex-positive" ethos was harnessed to promote the ideal of the nuclear family. Like Michel Houllebecq, Duvert is highly attuned to all the hypocrisies of late twentieth-century western "sexual liberation" mass movements."--Jacket

Baudrillard's remarkably prescient meditation on terrorism throws light on post-9/11 delusional fears and political simulations.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers (the army) are nomads who always come from the outside and keep threatening the authority of the state.

Review: "The War machine is the motor of the social machine; the primitive social being relies entirely on war, primitive society cannot survive without war. The more war there is, the less unification there is, and the best enemy of the State is war. Primitive society is society against the State in that it is society-for-war." Anthropologist Pierre Clastres significantly influenced Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and contributed to political anthropology. The posthumous publication of Archeology of Violence in 1980 compiled Clastres's final essays and the opening chapters of a book he began before his death in 1977. Building on his earlier work, Society Against the State, Clastres critiques his mentor, Claude Levi-Strauss, and challenges Marxist anthropology and other Western models of "primitive societies." He rejects the notion that violence among South American Indians stems from resource scarcity, instead arguing it serves as a deliberate strategy for territorial segmentation and preventing State formation. By intertwining the political and social spheres and ensuring tribal chiefs remain dependent on their communities, the "savages" Clastres describes emerge as astute political actors who preemptively resist globalization efforts.

Originally published in Italian in 2002, When the Word Becomes Flesh provides a compelling contribution to the understanding of language and its relation to human nature and social relationships. Adopting Aristotle's definition of the human being as a linguistic and political animal, Paolo Virno frames the act of speech as a foundational philosophical issue -- an act that in its purely performative essence ultimately determines our ability to pass from the state of possibility to one of actuality: that is, from the power to act to action itself. As the ultimate public act, speech reveals itself to be an intrinsically political practice mediating between biological invariants and changing historical determinations. In his most complete reflection on the topic to date, Virno shows how language directly expresses the conditions of possibility for our experience, from both a transcendental and a biological point of view. Drawing on the work of such twentieth-century giants as Ferdinand de Saussure, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Edmund Husserl, and Gottlob Frege, Virno constructs a powerful linguistic meditation on the political challenges faced by the human species in the twenty-first century. It is in language that human nature and our historical potentialities are fully revealed, and it is language that can guide us toward a more aware and purposeful realization of them.

Texts and interviews from the period that saw the publication of Deleuze's major works.

With Anti-Oedipus in 1972, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze instigated one of the most daring intellectual adventures of our time, updating both psychoanalysis and Marxism in light of a more radical and "constructivist" vision of capitalism. Assembled here for the first time, Guattari's notes, addressed to and annotated by Deleuze, reveal an inventive, visionary "conceptor," arguably one of the more enigmatic figures in philosophy and social-political theory today. The Anti-Oedipus Papers (1969-1973) are supplemented by substantial journal entries describing Guattari's turbulent relationship with his teacher Jacques Lacan, apprehensions about Anti-Oedipus and personal accounts of his life

A new, expanded, and reorganized edition of a collection of texts that present a fuller scope to Guattari's thinking from 1977 to 1985.

Julia Kristeva extends the definition of revolt beyond politics per se.

A fascinating anthology of texts and interviews written over 20 years by renowned French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

Las conversaciones del filósofo Peter Sloterdijk con el antropólogo Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, agrupadas bajo el título de El sol y la muerte, no sólo lanzan una atrevida mirada a nuestro tiempo eclipsado, son también una inmejorable introducción a la obra y el pensamiento del autor de Esferas.

An early work that lays the foundation for establishing a polemical dimension to psychoanalysis.

Transversality can be visualized as a fenced field with horses wearing adjustable blinkers, where the adjustment represents the "coefficient of transversality." When the blinkers are fully closed, the horses experience a traumatic encounter, but as they are opened, movement becomes easier. Originally published in French in 1972, this collection features articles by Félix Guattari written between 1955 and 1971, offering insight into his intellectual and political journey leading up to his collaboration with Gilles Deleuze in "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia." Guattari's unique background includes co-founding the La Borde psychiatric clinic in 1953 with psychoanalyst Jean Oury, emphasizing that treating psychotics requires altering the entire institutional context. He viewed "institutional psychotherapy" as a means not only to heal but also to foster a new relationship with the world. A dissident within the French Communist Party and an active participant in the May 1968 student uprising, Guattari recognized the potential for integrating analysis into political groups. He conceptualized these groups as open machines—subject-groups—rejecting hierarchical structures and developing transversally, rhizomatizing through connections with other groups.

Diese hier erstmals als Buch auf Deutsch veröff entlichte Studie zählt zu den konzisesten und wichtigsten Abhandlungen Baudrillards und ist doch eine der am wenigsten bekannten. Er beschäft igt sich darin mit den Grenzen der Soziologie, der Informationstheorie und den Th eorien von »Masse«, für ihn der »Nullpunkt des Politischen«. Baudrillard formuliert eine Informationstheorie, nach der »die Masse ein Medium ist, das stärker ist als alle Medien «.

Baudrillard's "The Ecstasy of Communication" is a pivotal work summarizing two decades of his radical theory, reflecting on contemporary alienation and the shift from meaningful existence to constant communication. This anti-manifesto critiques influences like McLuhan and remains a crucial companion to Baudrillard's oeuvre, offering a dark reflection on modernity.

Según Peter Sloterdijk, el siglo XX comenzó en un día y lugar específicos: el 22 de abril de 1915, en Ypres, en el norte de Francia. Ese día, el ejército alemán utilizó un gas clorhídrico destinado a exterminar de manera indiscriminada. Hasta entonces, la guerra, tal como la describió Clausewitz y la practicó Napoleón, implicaba atacar primero la función vital del adversario. El uso de gas venenoso marcó la transición de la guerra clásica al terrorismo. Este terror desde el aire inauguró una era en la que la idea principal ya no era atacar el cuerpo del enemigo, sino su entorno. Desde entonces, lo que se atacaría en tiempos de guerra y de paz serían las condiciones mismas necesarias para la vida. Este tipo de terrorismo se convirtió en la matriz de la guerra moderna y posmoderna, desde el gas tóxico de la Primera Guerra Mundial hasta el Zyklon B nazi utilizado en Auschwitz, desde el bombardeo de Dresde hasta el ataque al World Trade Center. Sloterdijk describe la ofensiva de la estética moderna, el terrorismo estético desde el surrealismo hasta Malevich, un "atmo-terrorismo" en las artes que paralelamente acompaña el asalto al entorno originado en la guerra.

Ranging from reflections on the Enlightenment and revolution to a consideration of the Frankfurt School, this collection offers insight into the topics preoccupying Foucault as he worked on what would be his last body of published work, the three-volume History of Sexuality.

Exploring the impact of automation and information technology, the writings delve into the transformation of labor organization and the broadening of exploitation beyond the traditional labor class. Negri examines the implications of neoliberalism, Thatcherism, and Reaganomics, highlighting how these shifts have not only displaced the political significance of labor but have also embedded exploitation across various societal spheres. The work critiques the resulting counterrevolution and its effects on contemporary social dynamics.

An analysis of how capitalism today produces subjectivity like any other good, and what would allow us to escape its hold.

Letters by writer, filmmaker, and cultural revolutionary Guy Debord conjure a vivid picture of the dynamic first years of the Situationist International movement.

6 Vorlesungen, die 1983 in Berkeley gehalten wurden: Wer ist in der Lage, die Wahrheit zu sagen? Mit welchen Folgen und mit welcher Beziehung zur Macht? Parrhesia bedeutet, freimütig und aufrichtig die Wahrheit zu sagen, und ist zuallererst eine Praktik, der es um die Übereinstimmung zwischen Denken und Leben geht.

In Aberrant Movements, David Lapoujade offers one of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. Drawing on the entirety of Deleuze's work as well as his collaborations with Félix Guattari, from the transcendental empiricism of Difference and Repetition to the schizoanalysis and geophilosophy of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, Lapoujade explores the central problem underlying the delirious coherence of Deleuze's philosophy: aberrant movements. These are the movements that Deleuze wrests from Kantian idealism, Nietzsche's eternal return, and the nonsense of Lewis Carroll; they are the schizophrenic processes of the unconscious and the nomadic line of flight traversing history - in short, the forces that permeate life and thought. Tracing and classifying their irrational logics represent the quintessential tasks of Deleuzian philosophy.

Exploring the concept of "picnolepsy," this work delves into the consciousness shaped by speed and its effects on perception. Virilio uses a range of cultural references, from cinema to notable historical figures, to illustrate the impact of speed on modern life. He connects the experience of living in a fast-paced society to themes of absence and disconnection. This edition includes a new introduction by Jonathan Crary, enhancing the discussion of visual culture and setting the stage for Virilio's later work on the intersection of war and cinema.

A vision of the city as a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence.

The book provides a critical analysis of François Mitterrand's ascent to power and the allure of political authority for the French Left. It chronicles the political landscape of France from 1977 to 1984, examining the complex relationship between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. Through a collection of previously published commentaries, it explores Baudrillard's concept of simulacrum in politics, revealing how political narratives can distort reality and influence public perception.

The most accessible and exhaustive introduction to Foucault's thought to date, including every extant interview made by Foucault from the mid-60s until his death in 1984.