COLLAPSE JOURNAL

The first volume of 'Collapse' I received last week from Oxford happens to be great. The book itself is just beautiful and successfully tends to be an art object. AND it contains really interesting thoughts.Robin MacKay, the editor, has TRULY performed a wonderful job.

In his interview, Alain Badiou describes the links between physics and mathematics. The interviewers (Ray Brassier and Robin MacKay) are quite witty. As usual, Badiou emphazises his well-known thesis : 'mathematics = ontology'. But the true dialogue helps considering it in a new light.

Reza Negarestani speculates on guerillas as Deleuze and Guattari did, following a rather technical approach : a dramatic mathematical war against State !

In a continental and challenging way, Thomas Duzer powerfully argues against lacanian psychoanalysis and opens the field of the mathematics of intensity, as rational ethics and freedom's pragmatics. Bright, deep, original.

If I'm still not convinced about Nick Bostrom's threads, Grigory Chaitin's thoughts on Leibniz and epistemology fascinated me. This man is clever as the devil.

Nick Land and Matthew Watkins contribute as well to this masterpiece of Philosophical Research and Development.

And to make it better, 'Collapse' is not lacking drawings : Nick Tilford's crowds are wonderfuly dizzy.

Volume 2 will present an analysis of Quentin Meillassoux's last book, 'Après la finitude'. I also have understood that Graham Harman will attack phenomenology. In a nutshell, some great things are still to come.