Welcome to the Michel Serres online hub

In an effort to provide better interaction among Michel Serres readers, I have added this blog component. I wish I could bring together all the people from around the world who have benefited from the valuable ideas that Serres has brought to life through his writings but short of that, I offer another small step in building a more diverse and lively group of conversations around ideas that he would very much want us to extend and multiply.

Dancing Stones (embossed line drawing) M Friesen 2003

Serres Lecture - Stanford Humanities Center

A Michel Serres lecture from the Stanford Humanities Center in California. The lecture is in French and includes a rather lengthy (and light-hearted in parts) introduction section.

Serres Game Show - "Identify That Quote"

A request came in to identify the source of a Michel Serres quote. If the notion that all of us are smarter than any one of us is true (I certainly think that is the case with Serres readers), perhaps we can get this figured out and avoid plummeting into a pool of mud. Here's the quote:
"In my eyes it is never a crime to steal knowledge - it is a good theft. The pirate of knowledge is a good pirate."

Michel Serres on Global Economics

Thanks to Guillaume Lebleu for this post. He translates parts of an interivew that Serres had with Les Echos, a French financial newspaper. I've posted a comment on Guillaume's site and would encourage you to take a look and offer your thoughts on the topic. Here is an excerpt from the blog:

"Philosophers are guilty. They have missed the magnitude of changes in the world...I see all institutions [as] true dinosaurs."

Does Serres have something valuable to contribute to the discussions on global economic health or is this kind of input a case of setting sail on a voyage for which he is ill-equipped?

Michel Serres / Le voyage encyclopédique 3/6
by zindabad7

Serres - Le voyage encyclopédique - DailyMotion video

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9m5dx_michel-serres-le-voyage-encyclopedi_shortfilms

Serres in Portugese - from Marcelo

Check out the comments of the Bibliography post to see Marcelo's recommendations on Portugese translations of Serres. Thanks Marcelo for sending in a list of the titles. Three cheers for Portugal and Brazil.

Current Bibliography of Serres's Writing

I'd like to update the increasingly incomplete Serres bibliography from a few years ago that I have and would welcome any input on current Serres publications in any language. The Wikipedia entry has these titles listed and I would be happy to update that entry with English, German, French, and other titles/translations.

1968 Le Système de Leibniz et ses modèles mathématiques, 2 vol. (PUF)
1969 Hermès I. La communication (Minuit)
1972 Hermès II. L’interférence (Minuit)
1974 Hermès III. La traduction (Minuit)
1974 Jouvences. Sur Jules Verne (Minuit)
1975 Auguste Comte. Leçons de philosophie positive, vol. I (Hermann)
1975 Feux et signaux de brume. Zola (Grasset)
1975 Esthétiques. Sur Carpaccio (Hermann)
1977 Hermès IV. La distribution (Minuit)
1977 La Naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucrèce. Fleuves et turbulences (Minuit) (tr. Jack Hawkes The Birth of Physics, 2000)
1980 Hermès V. Le passage du Nord-Ouest (Minuit)
1980 Le Parasite (Grasset)
1982 Genèse (Grasset)
1983 Détachement (Flammarion)
1983 Rome. Le livre des fondations (Grasset)
1985 Les Cinq Sens, Médicis de l’Essai Prize (Grasset)
1987 L’Hermaphrodite. Sarrasine sculpteur (Flammarion)
1987 Statues (François Bourin)
1989 Éléments d’histoire des sciences (in collaboration) (Bordas)
1990 Le Contrat naturel, Blaise Pascal Prize (François Bourin )
1991 Le Tiers-Instruit (François Bourin) (published in English as The Troubadour of Knowledge, 1997)
1992 Éclaircissements (François Bourin)
1993 Les Origines de la géométrie (Flammarion)
1993 La Légende des Anges (Flammarion)
1994 Atlas (Julliard)
1995 Éloge de la philosophie en langue française (Fayard)
1997 Nouvelles du monde (Flammarion)
1997 Le Trésor. Dictionnaire des sciences (coll.) (Flammarion)
1997 À visage différent (coll.) (Hermann)
1998 Paysages des sciences (Le Pommier)
1999 Variations sur le corps (Le Pommier)
2000 Hergé mon ami (Éd. Moulinsart)
2001 Le Livre de la médecine (coll.) (Le Pommier)
2001 Hominescence (Le Pommier)
2002 En amour, sommes-nous des bêtes ? (Le Pommier)
2002 Jules Verne : la science (Le Pommier)
2002 L'Homme contemporain (Le Pommier)
2003 L'Incandescent (Le Pommier)
2003 Qu'est-ce que l'humain ? (coll.) (Le Pommier)
2004 Rameaux (Le Pommier)
2006 Récits d'Humanisme (Le Pommier)

Transatlantic Media Conference - May 2009

Here is another place where Serres's work showed up in an academic conference. In this case it was called Media Theory on the Move: Transatlantic Perspectives on Media and Mediation. Flow, movement, the interaction of many elements, prepositions as the "pimps of language" can all be found in proximity to these themes. Here is the a post-conference summary paragraph of the particular session:

To conclude this rather intensive day of transatlantic flows, Peter Bexte (Cologne) tackled the issue of the movement of things by drawing on Michel Serres’ philosophie des prépositions. Following Serres, Bexte studied things in their connectedness and interrelationality. He supported this argument by drawing on Samuel Beckett’s ‘Quad I + II‘. Quad I and Quad II are two experimental teleplays made in the 1980s for the Süddeutsche Rundfunk. These television performances involve a play with the closed-circuit movement patterns of four actors, in which each actor moves according to precise and exact mathematical ‘rules’. Beckett’s mathematic choreography generates a degree of continuity, circularity and infinity. Or what Bexte has described as a ‘nothingness of something’. For Bexte, we need to reflect on and trace our linkages with media by which we are intertwined with mediated environments. Though his position on the symbiotic mutuality of relations does provide the means to understand the in-betweenness of media and mediatization, it however does not acknowledge violence and noise. It neglects that connectivity and disparity are two sides of the same coin.

Serres Interview - FNAC

Thanks to Stephanie Posthumus at McMaster University for pointing out this interview. It is in French - good practice for French learners like me and a more direct access to Serres for those of you who are fortunate in your fluency.

Vampires, Angels and other Parasite/Messengers

Here is a very worthwhile posting on a Vienna Vampire conference. It was an academic gathering with far greater depth than the pop-culture material that is so prevalent. One of the presenters featured Serres's Angels: A Modern Myth and it would have been great to have heard it. The themes of parasitism and of existence in some kind of in-between state are intriguing to think about within the space of vampires and their social/cultural place in our landscape. Reading the entry reminded me of watching a black and white film called Nosferatu while on a flight to California.

A resurgence of philosophy?

Finn has posted a short piece on the role the Michel Serres may have in re-invigorating the vocation of philosophy. Rather than the coldly clinical dissections of certain branches of twentieth-century Anglo-American analytic philosophy or the deeply obscure and possibly senseless language of some Continental experiments, Serres has laboured to bring philosophy to our attention as a habit of life and mind that infuses our experiences and contemplations with real life, hope and possibility.

Serres loves images like this one of earth, where the flow, patterns and connections can be seen and imagined. And where are the borders? Where are the red lines or dotted black lines that define countries and nations? Why, having seen such images hundreds of times, do we persist in our reduction alone habits? Clearly, reduction is only a very partial truth.

Cultural Differences: Video reflection from Michel Serres

This video is posted on the Stanford News Service website referenced in the previous post.

Michel Serres - Stanford News article

This is a really interesting article that provides a good overivew of the context of Michel Serres's work and thinking. The links on the side-bar are also useful places to explore further (one points back to this site). I'll add the video element in another post.

Design and Serres

This post showed up in a recent alert and is well worth reading. It explores Serres's use of 'parasite' and what that means for relationships, noise, signal, meaning, and chaos.

We are going to undertake a somewhat difficult project this week, we are going to read an essay from Michel Serres’s book, The Parasite. The chapter is called, “Theory of the Quasi Object”. This essay will offer us another way of thinking about objects, subjects and relations. Serres sets up a distinction of either/or between being and relation. This distinction between being and relation quickly turns out to be unstable, which results in these strange, swerving objects/subjects that Serres names quasi-objects and quasi-subjects. The conjunction of ‘quasi’ with object and subject suggests the perpetual mobility and transfer of these deceptively stable individuals along passages of relation toward the possibility of the formation of collectives of all kinds.

Noise as the necessary soil from which meaning can emerge is an interesting idea and fits well with complexity theory notions of non-reducibility. I remain very interested in the idea that if emergence means that lower-order interactions lead to higher level properties that are not reducible, it may well be that such emergence continues up beyond our human scales. We see it in galaxies but what if we scale up beyond that? What are the larger emergent characteristics of the universe?

Transhuman, Cylon, Progress

This post on the term transhuman sparked further thoughts about what constitutes human progress. Whether technophobe or technophile, our collective habits reveal our vote for technology as a means of progress. Remembering when our cell phones were the size of suitcases, we marvel at the elegant digital dance of our iPhones and BlackBerries. We have learned to vote for the party in power - science in this case - and welcome the seduction of Moore's Law and all it implies.

Our ability to measure the progress of our social fabric is less clear and thus it is more difficult to establish real progress. Some question the larger framing that definitive progress requires. Others point out that we have made great gains and it's hard to disagree when cases of enlightened governance are compared with previous oppressions. But a larger measure social fabric strength is not easy to establish.

Computers didn't exist a couple-hundred years ago so the fact that we have them is proof of technological gains. The human ills that beset us today have a much more persistent history. In the case of Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons demonstrate one vision of transhuman development that isn't exactly benign. Our own abilities to enact injustices of all kinds reveal that our own lesser augmentations have, in a similar way, failed to change the some of deeply engrained habits.

Serres has a lot to say about technology and human social inequalities. Are we making progress?

Post-Traumatic Urbanism

Here's a lengthy blog post from Post-Traumatic Urbanism that will likely be of interest to Serres readers. The post explores architecture, breakdown, and reflections on what might be done in our current context. The urban design themes lend themselves well to further discussion.

Five Senses - English Translation

This new Continuum translation hasn't been released at Amazon.ca (Canada) yet but Peter Jones from the UK pointed it out as something that will likely be of interest to Serres readers. It is available in the UK. If anyone does read it and wants to post some comments on the translation or the ideas covered, I would be happy to post something here. The UK site provides this overview:
This book represents a defining break in Michel Serres' work, leaving behind traditional philosophy to explore the history and culture of science. Marginalized by the scientific age with its metaphysical and philosophical systems, the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution.

An Interesting Use of The Parasite

The ideas of noise and parasitic activity in The Parasite were among the inspirations used to launch this "Neofuturist Manifesto." You might find the 50 second video, if not profound, then at least brief. I kind of got what they were going for but then it ends and you are left going, "Huh...interesting..." What did you think of it? I didn't embed it so you can travel there of your own free will.

Maria Assad - Book on sale

I happened on this Target sale of Reading With Michel Serres: Encounters With Time. It's a great book and may be of interest to those of you who haven't read it. My only sadness is that Maria is retired. It seems a bit strange to see a Serres book offered through Target.

A collection of good posts on Serres

Here's a nice collection of postings related to Serres's work.

Serres readers: University of Western Ontario

Correction: This event will take place in March 2009. Michel Serres: Global Dynamics Local Interpretations, is being organized by a Ph.D. comparitive literature candidate via the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario - Amy Hondronicols. If you are interested in submitting a paper proposal, you can do that here: http://www.acla.org/submit/ to fill out the form. Proposals are due by November 1st and should be a maximum of 250 words.

This seminar is part of the American Comparative Literature Association’s Annual Meeting. It takes place at Harvard University on March 26-29, 2009. If you have any questions please email Amy Hondronicols: ahondron [at] uwo {dot} ca

I'm always happy to find other Canadian Serres readers and Amy has noted that there are also UWO students and faculty in Lit Theory and French who are engaging with the ideas Serres has been communicating through his various writings.

Re-post: Clouds of Clouds

This was such an interesting post but you can't leave a comment unless you are part of their system. I'd like to open up their post for your comments. Here's the original:

CLOUDS OF CLOUDS by Miguel Leal and Luis Sarmento
http://www.virose.pt/clouds_of_clouds
Clouds of clouds is a random generator of cloud images. Each new cloud is unique and indexed to a particular time (GMT) on a particular day. Clouds of Clouds was developed in Perl + MySQL. It works over a database of more than 1.000.000 photos of clouds. Photo information was gathered from Flickr between September 10-13 2008, using Flickr API. The database will be regularly updated. Clouds of clouds is a web-based project comissioned for Interact 15 [http://www.interact.com.pt/]. The project was produced between July and September 2008. hosted by virose.pt

"This is randomness, and that is altogether different. If absolutely necessary, you can count the stars. A catalogue has been kept of them since Antiquity. But if you ask for a catalogue of the clouds, people laugh at you. There is no such term as cloud, defined as permanent, defined by its borders, by its terms or its terminations. […] Clouds, whirlwinds, flows, noises, all primary masses without qualities." (M. Serres)

Chaos theories, as they have emerged in strength since the 1960s, with their focus on complexity, were in fact an answer to the monstrous and misshapen nature of certain phenomena that were revealed to be resistant to determinist equations or to the laws of causality. Atmospheric phenomena such as clouds have always been seen as an image of the inability to submit certain realities to precise measurement. To all intents and purposes, clouds appeared to be a perfect example of irreducibility, instability and unpredictability. Clouds, in their apparent causal disjunction, like a whirlwind or vortex, represented the principles of error, exception and monstrosity. Perhaps this is why there have never been dreams of an individual cloud catalogue, since it would be so absurd. If we ask anybody for something similar, we risk being ridiculed, as Michel Serres recalls. Clouds are instantly fleeting and have no number or stable form. They exist now and no longer exist a moment later. We can classify the clouds approximately, order them by type or try to understand their signs but we have no way of archiving them. The exponential growth of Web files, particularly with the participative forms that Web 2.0 has made common, has finally brought us an embryo for these absurd archives, and not only for clouds.

Everything that has always been firmly uncataloguable seems to have found its place in the distributed digital archives. At the same time, curiously, we have an increasing popularity in recent years for terms such as Cloud Computing, Cloud Architecture, Data Clouds, Text Clouds or Tag Clouds, in what represents the attribution of a new semantic power to our idea of a cloud. Particularly on the web, with the explosion of social networks, it has become common to use similar devices to organise meta-information generated by users. Clouds of clouds is a random generator of cloud images. Each new cloud is unique and indexed to a particular time (GMT) on a particular day. Its clouds were made on similar dates and at similar times, not necessarily the same year, and are linked to the original web pages. The basis of the archives are all images indexed with the tags or on Flickr.

These are not clouds in the atmospheric meaning of the word, but instead entities with which they share a complexity that can be confused with instability, unpredictability and irreducibility. That this is based on a relatively simple visualisation arrangement is another way of indicating that this complexity depends less on what we see on the surface than on the networks of relationships established from it. The clouds generated by the users are kept in searchable archives. These archives will grow with the project and are intended to become, over time, veritable daily, monthly, yearly archives of clouds. Clouds of clouds also works as a type of infinite nesting doll: clouds within clouds, archives within archives.

Good Post on Weather

David Williams has a very nice post on the cultural and intellectual space/aesthetics of weather. Serres is referenced but not featured. However, it is a very worthwhile reflection and anyone familiar with Serres's admonition that contemplation of weather should be the among the most central features of a true philosophers work, will find William's article worthwhile.

Michel Serres video interview -Bestiaire 2008

Hope and Mary Zournazi

I just came across this post that links to a PDF of Mary Zournazi's book on Hope from a few years back. One of the people she interviewed was Michel Serres. That's of interest. But the other people she interviewed are also well worth reading. The book is a reminder of the role that intangibles, like hope, play in our lives individually and collectively. High tech doesn't render these threads of the social fabric out-of-date.

More Books Added

While in Ottawa recently, I stopped in at the Librairie du Soleil on Rue George - just to the east of Parliament Hill. My good fortune was to find that they had four Michel Serres titles in French that I didn't have. The new additions to my library are: Hominescence, Le Tiers-Instruit, Les Cinq Sens, Le Mal Propre. 

My desire to become better in speaking and reading French will be enhanced by these texts as I pursue what will, undoubtedly, be a life-long effort to understand more fully the nuance and style of Serres.

What does the world think of Michel Serres?

Inspired by Angela Last's comments to me in a recent email, I'd like learn what people from among the international readership of Michel Serres think about his work. The idea isn't to try to find concensus but rather to explore the range of reactions and thoughts that his complex work inspires in people.

Angela's opening volley
I think Michel Serres has a different status in each European country. In Germany, for instance, hardly anyone knows him, although a few of his books were translated into German. In England, he is very popular with a lot of social scientists, but not so much with philosophers. In France and the francophone part of Switzerland, he seems to be a well-known figure (intellectuals are much more public figures over there - they are on TV and in magazines and everything), but a figure of some sort of controversy: some people like him, some people smile at his ideas, some people are enraged by him joining the academie francaise, some people outright deride his ideas.

In Canada, I'd say he's largely unknown, though where he is read, I think he has a hearing. Memorial University in St. John's, NFLD, awarded him an honourary doc a few years back.

Send in your comments and take a swing at figuring out what people in your part of the world think about his ideas.

New Serres Posts

Here are some new posts that provide commentary on Serres and his work. 

Andrew Czink - Simon Fraser University

Kotaku - Serres shows up in a gaming review

Peter Jones - Health care and Hodges

Stanford - Topics in French Literature, Philosophy and Humanities

Angela - Mutable Matter blog - a surprise discovery in a bookstore

Michel Serres and UNESCO

My Google Alert inbox this morning let me know that Michel Serres has contributed to a UNESCO book titled "Making Peace with the Earth" (Berghahn Books/UNESCO Publishing). I wasn't familiar with the series but apparently it is the third volume in the UNESCO 21st Century Talks which is edited by Jérôme Bindé. The article from a Turkish source states that Paul Crutzen, Nicolas Hulot, Javier Pérez de Cuellar, Michel Serres, Mostafa Tolba, Asit K. Biswas and Edward O. Wilson are among the contributors. A quick spin around the UNESCO site didn't turn anything up on the book. I'll check back later.

Steven Connor - paper on Serres and the Middle

A provoking meditation on the very common Serresian theme of the middle, as a passing between things. 

"There are two kinds of middle, static and dynamic. There is the abstract middle, or centre, that part of a structure which is equidistant from all bounding edges. Then there is the more dynamic kind of middling or mediation, which consists in a movement towards the middle, which never comes to reside there. The line which runs down the centre of an opening in a book divides it into two, but does not belong to the space of the page, since there is no part of the page that does not belong to the recto or the verso. The dynamism of the middle arises when the middle of the page is folded into the middle of one of the spaces it divides off, which then creates two more halves, and another middle into which the centre may be drawn. This kind of middling is always on the hop, an unbalanced attempt to re-topple itself into balance."

Weissman on the Birth of Physics

The title link will bring you to Joseph Weissman's article that explores some key ideas relating to Michel Serres, mathematics and physics.

Declination in a Laminar Flow

Serres begins the first section of The Birth of Physics by showing how the clinamen (atomic swerve) has been represented as a weakness of atomic theory, as a prescientific absurdity. Why has it been able to appear this way? First, because declination is a physical absurdity (since experimentation cannot reveal its existence); second, it is a mechanical absurdity (since it is contrary to the principle of inertia and would result in perpetual motion); and finally, it is a logical absurdity (since it is introduced without justification, as being the cause of itself before being the cause of all things.) Serres writes: “The thing is so absurd and so far from our experience that the physicalist minimizes it, as if to hide it.”

Legendas da Ciência - Emergir - Parte 5 de 5

Michel Serres dancing

Catherine Bernstein interviews Michel Serres on the Seine

Michel Serres - Fnac Boulogne (1/3)

Michel Serres - Fnac Boulogne (2/3)

Michel Serres - Fnac Boulogne (3/3)

Raoul Mortley - Interview of Michel Serres

ABSTRACT (click for PDF of interview)
Michel Serres was born in France in 1930, and is Professor in History of Science at the Sorbonne (Paris 1). He began his adult life by training for the navy, and a love for the sea and its metaphors is always evident in his work. Originally from the south of France, Michel Serres is keenly interested in rugby. His philosophical work began with the study of Leibniz, but following this he embarked on his own self-expression, which led him to the five-volume Hermes series of books. Some of Leibniz' themes persist throughout his work, particularly those concerned with combination, communication and invention. His method is based on an encyclopaedic approach, and this holism is evident in his writing: all kinds of data are held to contribute to philosophy, and the philosopher must not cut himself off from any form of investigation. His most recent work bridges the gap between philosophy and literature, and it has a wide readership.

Michel Serres on Sport

Angels and Beasts

In the section of Angels that deals with angels and beasts, Serres explores the dynamic of chaos and order through mythical creatures. The categories we use to demarcate each, assigning certain attributes to the angels and other, generally contrasting attributes to the beasts or monsters or demons. Our own world bears witness to the complexity of trying to neatly scribe such lines between things. When it is most confusing, I imagine some analytically fixated scholar trying to draw a line between hot and cold in a turbulent stream. There is hot and cold, as there are other polarities. The perplexity comes in learning their distinctions.

Quebec City Bookstore

This is the bookstore where I purchased the books mentioned in the previous post. For some of you, access to this kind of resource is likely easy. Living in Calgary, Alberta, it is less so for me. Online access is, of course, an open door to all kinds of great resources but having a chance to browse through a shop in a French speaking community was deeply encouraging. I don't think the store has a website but I commend it to you if you ever have the chance to visit Quebec City.

Here's the address:
Librairie Generale Francaise
10, cote de la Farbrique, Quebec G1R 3V7
1-418-692-2442 or 1-418-692-2449
email is lgf {at} biz {dot} videotron [dot] ca

A Wonderful Find

While on a month-long road trip this summer with my family, I had a chance to visit Quebec City. There, within the beautiful walls, I found a French bookstore. After entering, I located the philosophy section and was excited to see a plastic wrapped edition of Le Systeme de Leibniz et ses modeles mathematiques. As a slow student of French, I will have my work cut out digging through this but it will be worth every effort. I asked the shopkeeper if he had any more works by Serres. He returned with Le Contrat Naturel, La Legende des Anges, and Les Origines de la Geometrie. This was such a welcome find.