Un vieux rêve habite l'imaginaire de l'homme d'Occident. Le rêve d'une société où l'homme pourrait vivre libre, sans avoir à redouter la misère, la violence de la guerre ou l'exploitation sauvage de sa vie et de sa liberté et où la vie ne serait que sous le signe de la paix et de la concorde entre les hommes. C'est à suivre ce rêve dans sa constance et ses métamorphoses mais aussi ses dérives dans notre histoire que s'attache ce livre.
La folie a été progressivement colonisée par la raison médicale et psychiatrique et réduite, au fil des siècles au concept de maladie mentale par la volonté de maitrise et de contrôle qui habite au cœur de l'individu et de chaque groupe social. Nous formulons l'hypothèse que cette volonté repose sur un fantasme utopien dont l'archétype trouve son origine dans l'œuvre de Thomas More : l'utopie, écrite en pleine période humaniste, au début du XVIe siècle. La première partie de notre travail consiste donc, d'une part, à analyser les caractéristiques de l'utopie : scène du même, fantasme de toute puissance, philosophie de la propreté, religion rationnelle, d'autre part, montrer sa fonction dynamisante au sein du groupe social. La seconde partie oppose les multiples figures d'oxymoron de la folie : ironie et tragédie, transgression et fédération, inspiration-divine et possession démoniaque, spirituelle et corporelle, à la figure de synecdoque qui domine à la fin du siècle, réduisant la folie à la maladie. Le mouvement réducteur se fait par la puissance dominante du fantasme utopien de contrôle social. L'argument qui clôt l'ensemble du travail tente de montrer qu'actuellement les moyens techniques dont nous disposons, pourraient permettre que se réalise l'utopie. Mais au coeur même de la science renait la figure d'oxymoron, figure de folie, jeu dialectique des contraires et perspectives d'un nouvel "ars oppositorum
Fantasy and science fiction are both involved in the process of innovation in techno-scientific societies. Long regarded as a hindrance to rationality, and to science, science fiction has become the object of praise in recent decades. Innovative organizations use science fiction to stimulate the creativity of their teams, and more and more entrepreneurs are using its influence to develop innovation. Scientific practice relies in part on an imaginary dimension. The mapping of the technical imagination of science fiction has become an important strategic issue, as has its patentability. The conquest of space, the construction of cyberspace and virtual reality, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies are all at the center of futuristic fictions that participate in scientific speeches and discoveries.
Science fiction is often presented as a source of utopia, or even of prophecies, used in capitalism to promote social, political and technoscientific innovations. Science Fiction and Innovation Design assesses the validity of this approach by exploring the impact this imaginary world has on the creativity of engineers and researchers. Companies seek to anticipate and predict the future through approaches such as design fiction: mobilizing representations of science fiction to create prototypes and develop scenarios relevant to organizational strategy. The conquest of Mars or the weapons of the future are examples developed by authors to demonstrate how design innovation involves continuous dialogue between multiple players, from the scientist to the manager, through to the designers and the science fiction writers.
"Peter Iver Kaufman is admirably and ideally qualified to undertake this project of reading More on politics in the light of Augustine on politics. In vigorous, well-paced prose, he tackles an important and original subject." --Marcia L. Colish, Frederick B. Artz Professor of History, emerita, Oberlin College "Incorrectly Political will attract readers not only because it is written with the author's characteristic flair and liveliness, but also because of his established capacity to bridge centuries of Western thought and history. Written at the dawn of the new century, this book acquires deep resonance from the events unfolding around the world, circumstances to which Augustine's and More's complex thoughts on political possibility still speak. If ever a study of such hoary figures from the Christian past deserved the label 'timely,' it is surely this one." --Kevin Madigan, Harvard University Divinity School Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries and Thomas More in the sixteenth were familiar with the deceits and illusions that enabled even the most vile rulers to shore up their dignity and that gave repressive regimes an inviolability of sorts. Both men knew the politics of their times, both were involved in politics, and both were at one time politically ambitious. Augustine needed and made good use of government's powers of coercion and damage control in his struggle against the Donatists. The clear advantages of political protection and correction preoccupied More in his battle against Martin Luther. Both later changed their minds and believed, finally, the political imagination, based as it is on a desire for power, always and inevitably leads to devastation and suffering. Peter Iver Kaufman explains how and why we have failed to appreciate Augustine's and More's profound political pessimism, reintroducing readers to two of the Christian tradition's most enigmatic yet influential figures. Each had been disturbed by the reach of his own political ambitions--as by those of contemporaries. Each knew that government was useful--yet always deceitful. And each wrote a classic--widely read to this day, Augustine's City of God and More's Utopia,as well as abundant correspondence and polemical tracts to explain why government on earth might be used, though never meaningfully improved.
This collection revisits A Theory of Literary Production (1966) to show how Pierre Macherey’s remarkable—and still provocative—early work can contribute to contemporary discussions about the act of reading and the politics of formal analysis. Across a series of historically and philosophically contextualized readings, the volume’s contributors interrogate Macherey’s work on a range of pressing issues, including the development of a theory of reading and criticism, the relationship between the spoken and the unspoken, the labor of poetic determination and of literature’s resistance to ideological context, the literary relevance of a Spinozist materialism, the process of racial subjectification and the ontology of Blackness, and a theorization of the textual surface. Pierre Macherey and the Case of Literary Production also includes three new texts by Macherey, presented here in English for the first time: his postface to the revised French edition of A Theory of Literary Production; “Reading Althusser,” in which Macherey analyzes the concept of symptomatic reading; and a comprehensive interview in which Macherey reflects on the historical conditions of his early work, the long arc of his career at the intersection of philosophy and literature, and the ongoing importance of Louis Althusser’s thought. Recent translations of Macherey’s work into English have introduced new readers to the critic’s enduring power and originality. Timely in its questions and teeming with fresh insights, Pierre Macherey and the Case of Literary Production demonstrates the depths to which his work resonates, now more than ever.
