Continuum Philosophy News

A trio of Ranciere titles

I am pleased to be able to announce the publication of not one, not two but three new studies of the work of Jacques Rancière, one of the most influential French thinkers writing today. Firstly, and slightly belatedly as this was in fact published last year, Jacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation, by Charles Bingham (Simon Fraser) and Gert Biesta (Stirling), a book that demonstrates the importance of Rancière’s educational thought and how educational theory needs to be informed by his philosophical project. It includes a new essay by Rancière himself and is a must-read for scholars of social theory and all who profess to educate.

Secondly, a book that represents the first comprehensive introduction to Rancière aimed at a student audience - Jacques Rancière: An Introduction by Joseph J. Tanke (California College of Arts). The book explores Rancière’s ideas on philosophy, aesthetics and politics and provides readers new to Rancière with a clear overview of his enormous intellectual output. Engaging with many un-translated and unpublished sources, the book will also be of interest to Rancière’s long-time readers.

Finally, Reading Rancière, edited by Paul Bowman (Cardiff) and Richard Stamp (Bath Spa), brings together leading international scholars in the first sustained critical exploration of Rancière’s work on politics, aesthetics and philosophy in English. The book offers a critically balanced response to the work of this major contemporary theorist, as well as a new interview and a key text published here for the first time.

And watch this space for translations of Rancière's Althusser's Lesson and Mallarmé, forthcoming this summer from Continuum.

Sarah 

New Philosophy Dictionaries: Hegel and Gadamer

Two new volumes have recently been published in our Continuum Philosophy Dictionaries series and are overdue a mention on this blog. The Hegel Dictionary, by Glenn Alexander Magee (Long Island), and The Gadamer Dictionary, by Chris Lawn (Limerick) and Niall Keane (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), each provide a comprehensive, fully cross-referenced guide to a major philosopher, covering his key terms, ideas, influences, legacy and major writings. The Dictionaries are an essential (and affordable!) resource for anyone reading or studying these challenging thinkers. Volumes on Sartre and Derrida are already available and volumes on Marx, Kant and Husserl, amongst others, are coming soon. Watch this space.

Sarah 

Deleuze and World Cinemas - a guest post from Continuum author David Martin-Jones

In August 2010 I spent a very enjoyable week in the sunshine as a Visiting Professor at the University of Campinas, Brazil. I worked with postgraduate students from a variety of different disciplines, discussing ideas from my latest book, Deleuze and World Cinemas (Continuum, 2011). I was delighted to find them extremely receptive to the notion that the ideas of Gilles Deleuze – a philosopher who is now as famous in South America as he is in Europe, the USA and across Asia – could be explored through analysis of films from around the world.

Deleuze and World Cinemas is my third monograph, my second on Deleuze and cinema. It marks the culmination of several years of thinking about Deleuze’s two controversial Cinema books of the 1980s in relation to many films he did not himself discuss – from the silent films of Georges Méliès to European spaghetti westerns, Argentine melodramas, Bollywood blockbusters, Jackie Chan’s early Hong Kong action films and Michael Mann’s contemporary Hollywood movies. I used these films to enable me to posit a constructive critique of Deleuze’s books, bringing his ideas into contact with a range of world cinemas (including India, Argentina, Hong Kong, South Korea, etc). Noting the Eurocentric nature of some of Deleuze’s conclusions, due to his primary focus on US and European cinemas, I reconsidered and developed his ideas in ways that would give them further relevance for our contemporary era of globalization.

In December 2010 I spent an uncomfortable four days struggling through the snow that besieged the UK, trying to make a normally very simple trip from Scotland, where I live at present, to South Korea. I was to give a keynote paper taken from the book at the annual English Languages and Literatures of Korea Conference, at Kyung Hee University. Sadly, the weather forced me to abandon the journey on that occasion, but somehow I do not think it will be my last trip to explore the usefulness of Deleuze’s work on cinema in different international contexts. There remains something fascinating about the way Deleuze explores cinema, as a vehicle for “thinking” about our contemporary lives. It simultaneously reinforces the distinctive nature of individual cultures and their cinemas, and yet retains the power to bring us closer together in our thinking … in spite of the weather.

- David Martin-Jones, 2011

 

 “Martin-Jones writes with clarity and verve, bringing lucidity to Deleuze’s difficult texts and offering provocative insights into a variety of cinematic traditions and practices. A superb contribution to Deleuze studies and essential reading for anyone interested in world cinemas."

Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia, USA.

Continuum sweeps the board!

I returned from a week's holiday on Monday to the fantastic news that Continuum has been crowned Ingram Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year and the overall Independent Publisher of the Year at the UK 2011 IPG Independent Publishing Awards. The awards took place last Thursday evening at the IPG conference in Chipping Norton, where the judges applauded our success in transforming our publishing business in challenging economic times, saying 'This is Continuum's moment'. Needless to say, we are all delighted and fully intend to keep up the good work! For more on the awards, see this article on the Bookseller website.

Sarah

Critical praise for “The Soul Hypothesis”

    In recent years, science has edged closer and closer to the territory of philosophy, making increasingly strong claims about everything from epistemology to ethics.  What unites the broad community of “scientific naturalists”—ranging from Richard Dawkins to the evolutionary psychologists—is a belief that consciousness and motivation are reducible to the series of electrical signals transmitted between neurons in the brain.  They offer us a seemingly clear-cut choice between a rational embrace of physical reality and a retreat into superstition.

     This choice, however, strikes many philosophers as a false one.  In “The Soul Hypothesis,” Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz have marshaled Analytic philosophy’s first sustained and comprehensive response to mechanistic materialism.  Their work compiles essays by leading Anglo-American philosophers from diverse schools of thought, united in their opposition to a reductionist concept of the mind.  It is perfectly rational, they argue, to acknowledge the dependence of consciousness on the physical brain without conceding that the former is determined by (or identical with) the latter.  Indeed, their position, known as substance dualism, has substantial advantages over the alternatives.

            But don’t just take our word for it!  Check out this enthusiastic praise from the Wall Street Journal and the Notre Dame Philosophical Review:

"Sooner or later, the contributors to ‘The Soul Hypothesis’ warn, scientists will pinpoint the exact three neurons whose firing accompanies the thought of our deciding to make a phone call or, if you prefer, deciding to get up and get a beer from the refrigerator. As ever more such micro-couplings are observed, we will—so scientists tell us with unseemly glee—gradually come to see that our cherished conscious life is nothing but a long series of electrical impulses, not an autonomous realm of free will and free thought... The book's contributors set out this scientific challenge fully and engagingly, but they also expose its fallacies. ‘The Soul Hypothesis’ performs yeoman service in rescuing the human capacities for consciousness and voluntary action from scientific challenge." – “The Wall Street Journal”

“This is a book that all philosophers of mind, from senior undergraduates up, should read. Some of the material in the scientific pieces came as revelations to me and help undermine the current presumption that scientific naturalism is the educated option – even physical science does not really support it.” – “Notre Dame Philosophical Review”

The Soul Hypothesis should appeal to anyone interested in the continuing negotiations between philosophical and empirical inquiry.  It demands attention from Analytic philosophers of mind, Continental theorists of science, philosophically inclined theologians, and even hardcore disciples of Dawkins.

-Pavel Godfrey, Editorial Intern at Continuum New York

Continuum shortlisted for UK IPG Award

We're feeling quite pleased with ourselves at Continuum! We've been shortlisted for the Ingram Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year award at the UK 2011 IPG Independent Publishing Awards, run in association with The Bookseller and The London Book Fair. Making the shortlist is very gratifying and comes in the wake of an exceptionally productive few years at Continuum in which the company has grown significantly. Of course, none of it would be possible without our much-valued network of authors - so thank you!

The prizes will be announced at a special Gala Dinner on Thursday 10 March, during the IPG’s Annual Conference at Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire. Lots of fingers crossed here.

Sarah