We are all fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis – of the caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly. Their bodies have almost nothing in common. They don’t share the same world: one crawls on the ground and the other flutters its wings in the air. And yet they are one and the same life.Emanuele Coccia argues that metamorphosis – the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies – is the relationship that binds all species together and unites the...

In June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. As the EU’s chief negotiator, for four years Michel Barnier had a seat at the table as the two sides thrashed out what ‘Brexit’ would really mean. The result would change Britain and Europe forever.During the 1600 days of complex and often acrimonious negotiations, Michel Barnier kept a secret diary. He recorded his private hopes and fears, and gave a blow-by-blow account as the negotiations oscillate...

In this book, the renowned philosopher and polymath Alain Badiou tells the story of the first five decades of his life, from 1937 to 1985, setting it within the political history of the twentieth century.Born in Morocco on the eve of catastrophic conflict, Badiou's childhood and youth were marked by the Second World War and the Algerian War, experiences that would shape his political consciousness. Badiou honed his political convictions as an activist and organizer among students a...

Throughout the history of the Western world, Jews have suffered various forms of exclusion, stigmatization, and discrimination that have forced them always to be aware of their very particular situation. The Jews became a community under siege and, as Shlomo Sand argues, Judaism was shaped by the hostile gaze of Christian civilization. While the forms of hostility endured by the Jews have varied over the centuries, it is impossible to understand twentieth-century anti-Judaism, or Jewish id...

Since the brutal massacre perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October and the subsequent bombing and invasion of Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been thrust back to the centre of the world’s attention. How can this deep-rooted conflict, stretching back for more than 75 years, be brought to an end? What kind of political structure might one day enable Israelis and Palestinians to overcome the seemingly interminable cycle of violence and live in peace with one another?For many years...

A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land.During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, bo...

What is happening to the Left? It seems to be dying a slow death. While many commentators have predicted its demise, the Left has always defied these bleak prognoses and risen from the ashes in the most unexpected ways. Nevertheless, we are witnessing today a global decline in organized movements on the Left, and while social struggles continue to challenge dominant political regimes, these efforts do not translate into support for traditional left parties or into the creation of dynamic m...

What is the relation between politics and the world? It might seem that global capitalism has created one world, but this is an illusion because capitalism creates a world of objects and money that divides human existence into regions separated by fences and walls built to keep some people out. In place of this falsely unified world of global capitalism, we need to assert a fundamental principle – namely, that there is one world of living subjects. This, in Badiou's view, is the categorica...

Perspectives from philosophy, aesthetics, and art on how to envisage the construction site of possible worlds.Given the highly coercive and heavily surveilled dynamics of the present moment, when the tremendous pressures exerted by capital on contemporary life produces an aggressively normative “official reality,” the question of the construction of other possible worlds is crucial and perhaps more urgent than ever.This collection brings together different ...

A geophilosophical odyssey through the remains of Cornwall's industrial past offers a historical portrait of geotrauma in action.This unique document provides a pioneering case study in post-“site-specific” geophilosophy. Based on a weird field trip into Cornwall's mining heartlands with geologists, philosophers, and ecologists as guides, Hydroplutonic Kernow drills down through nature, industry, and cultural capital to site the local within the global, un...

Cryptocurrencies are often associated with right-wing political movements, or even with the alt-right. They are the preserve of libertarians and fans of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek. With their promotion of anonymity and individualism, there’s no doubt that they seamlessly slot into the prevailing anti-State ideology. But in this book Mark Alizart argues that the significance of cryptocurrencies goes well beyond cryptoanarchism. In so far as they allow us ‘to appropriate collectively the m...

We have long accepted the face as the most natural and self-evident thing, believing that in it we could read, as if on a screen, our emotions and our doubts, our anger and joy. We have decorated them, made them up, designed them, as if the face were the true calling card of our personality, the public manifestation of our inner being.Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than a window opening onto our inner nature, the face has always been a technical artefact—a construc...