Over more than four decades, the work of Isabelle Stengers has ranged widely across many different subjects, from the practices of physics, biology and chemistry to psychoanalysis, ethnopsychiatry, ecology, gender, climate change, animism, capitalism, witchcraft, medicine, drugs and the history of philosophy.
Providing a comprehensive overview of Stengers’ work, this book situates her as a primary figure in a philosophical tradition extending from Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, William James, Henri Bergson and Felix Guattari to perhaps her main precursors, Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. In doing so, he explores how Stengers’ constructivism resists the hierarchical binarity characteristic of modernity, constructing the means to create coherence among problematic differences, a creation which could potentially transform the binary constructions of gender, capitalism and climate change.
Situates Isabelle Stengers as one of the most significant figures in contemporary continental philosophy.
Arvustused
Maxwells timely study explores Stengers work through its interlocutors and predecessors (Leibniz, Whitehead, Deleuze, James, and others) and diverse forays in psychoanalysis, ethnopsychiatry, ecology, and the sciences. Confirming her importance as a visionary world philosopher, Maxwell provocatively asks if Stengers constructivist ethos leads to a becoming-personal that unsettles philosophys complacency. -- Russell J. Duvernoy, Kings University College at Western University, Canada
Acknowledgments
Introduction: An Unfaithful Heir to Whitehead and Deleuze
Constructivism
Peace Fabrication
Resistance to the Present
Reclaiming Nonmodern Practices
Conclusion: Fighting for Peace
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Grant Maxwell is a philosopher whose books include Integration and Difference: Constructing a Mythical Dialectic (Routledge, 2022) and Deleuze and Polytheism (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). He has served as a Professor at Baruch College and Lehman College in New York, and he has published articles and chapters with Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Penn State Press, the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, the American Philosophical Association blog, and Interalia Magazine. He holds a PhD from the City University of New Yorks Graduate Center and he lives in Brooklyn.
