Speculative Medievalisms and From Decision to Heresy

Some of you may be interested in two volumes that have recently come out that I am proud to have been involved with. First is the Speculative Medievalisms volume which collects the papers from the two events of the same name. This is available from the publisher as a free open-access PDF in addition to a print copy you can buy. My contribution is entitled “The Speculative Angel” and includes some translations from Lardreau & Jambet, Corbin, and Gilles Grelet. It includes a lot of other very interesting material.

Second is the Urbanomic/Sequence collection of essays by Laruelle entitled From Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard Thought [US] [UK]. I co-translated, with Nicola Rubczak, three of the essays found there, but Robin Mackay has done a stellar job of editing the volume. His introduction is a mix of interview and exposition that is really helpful and clear.

Noteworthy Books of 2012

A few weeks ago, Scott Esposito (editor of the consistently great Quarterly Conversation) asked me for an annotated list of the five best books I’d read in 2012. After doing so, I started feeling bad about the books I left off the list, so I sat down and compiled a larger one. Below the fold you’ll find that I’ve re-listed a couple of the most noteworthy ones I originally highlighted, and a slew of others. Feel free to provide your own list in the comments.

All I want for Christmas is books

There’s more to us than joyless cynicism here at AUFS — we also want stuff, we want things. In the last couple years, for instance, I’ve started to want a lot of clothes. I suspect that this is a desire that can be satiated, since I experienced a similar lust for shoes for a while there, which calmed down once I obtained my rather minimal idea of a “full set” (one casual and one dressy in black and brown; one set of tennis shows).

My clothing drives would have to reach truly pathological levels, though, to reach the intensity of my desire for books. Every time I’m at Anna Kornbluh’s house, for instance, I long for her full sets of Lacan and Freud in the original. And this leads me to my proposed open thread today: what gift of books would be your wish come true? (Assume money is no object.)

For me (sorry, Lacan!), I think it would be the Corpus Christianorum edition of Augustine’s De Trinitate, along with a gift card good for ten volumes in the Sources Chrétiennes series.

Presocratics

Does anyone know of an affordable edition of the Presocratics with the Greek text? Or a readily accessible online resource? We’re reading them in the Natural Science 1 course I’m taking this semester at Shimer, and I’d like to take a closer look (and perhaps ultimately dig into Heidegger’s work on them — is it worth working through his courses?).

A Great Authors curriculum

A strange thought occurred to me: what would the “Great Books” curriculum look like if it was restructured around a “Great Authors” principle? That is, it wouldn’t be a matter of picking out the most exceptional or useful works to build a curriculum, but of picking out a handful of authors, whose works would be read in full (or as close as possible). What would it look like to provide a plausible education in such a format?

One major change is that the “Stockholm Syndrome” approach that one will often favor in introducing students to new texts (i.e., read as charitably as possible, construe the arguments as strongly as possible, etc.) would be unsustainable. Let’s say you chose Freud, for instance — you couldn’t start from a “Freud is always right unless we’re really, really sure he isn’t” position, because Freud changes his mind too much. After a certain point, it’s no longer about figuring out “what Freud thinks,” but about figuring out the persistent problems that he’s responding to. If students could come to that point, they might arguably have a more lively grasp of what’s at stake in psychology than if they had a sampling of several authors’ views.

Or maybe not. In any case: Who would you choose? And keep in mind that I’m from a less strictly orthodox Great Books school, so you’re allowed to pick contemporary authors and, more generally, there’s no requirement of overtowering obviousness. (In my view, the only author who would be totally non-negotiable is Kafka.)

The Synaptic Gospel: Published!

The Synaptic Gospel habituating in my basement work area.

I am pleased to report that The Synaptic Gospel is published and I have now seen the finished product.  Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the book.

The book is an attempt to force a conversation between phenomenology and affect neuroscience to re-think religious communities’ practical paradigms for worship and religious education.  Thinkers engaged along the way include Husserl, Stein, Panksepp, Csikszentmihalyi, and others.

After the Postsecular and the PostmodernAAR Discount

Our session at the AAR was great and I have a pretty good recording of most of the talks that I will upload soon. I wanted to let people know that have a few copies of the book left over from the talk that we are selling at a good discount. If you would like a paperback of After the Postsecular and the Postmodern we have limited copies at $25 plus $2 to help with shipping. It sells on Amazon for $45, so you will be saving a significant amount of cash. If you are interested please email me at anthonypaul.smith(at)gmail.com and we will arrange payment and I’ll ship it out to you. If you live in the UK and are interested in the discount also feel free to drop me a line and we will work something out. This deal ends November 30th, so it is very limited.

Financialization, managerialism, and abject utter failure

Neoliberal economic systems are dominated by two interrelated trends: financialization and managerialism. In the business press, one frequently reads that the management team of a company is the most important indicator of its likely success, but on the other hand, the measure of that success is the delivery of “shareholder value,” which most often happens through actions that juke the short-term share price or through changes in the capital structure of the company (mergers and acquisitions, share buybacks, etc.). This is supposed to deliver good results, as “shareholder-oriented managements” submit themselves directly to the imperatives of financial markets, which in turn are supposed to be brilliant allocators of capital to its most productive uses — everyone wins!

In reality, the result of this feedback loop has been catastrophically bad management of nearly everything. A case in point, and one that I take somewhat personally: the Borders bankruptcy.

The Synaptic Gospel: Cover, Updates

While many of you are shmoozing, talking, and AARing at the AAR/SBL this weekend, and I am nestled at home, I thought I’d provide an update on my book…  Here’s the cover, with which I am very pleased.

If you’re still interested in pre-ordering The Synaptic Gospel, I can still accept a limited number of orders.  You can do so by sending $29 to cdrodkey [at] yahoo [dot] com or mailing me a check for $28–send me a message to reserve your copy if you’re going to use snail mail.

You can also “like” the book on Facebook by clicking here and doing the “like” thing.

I have a few signings lined up for next year–all in Pennsylvania, most are private affairs and only one is open to the public–but if you’d like me to come to your church or college and speak or do a signing, please message me to see if we can make that happen.  Aside from next year’s AAR, I may be making tripts to the Nashville and Chicago areas in the summer.

The Synaptic Gospel: Pre-orders

My Book, The Synaptic Gospel, is now available to pre-order directly from me.  I am attempting to sell a limited number of books before it goes to press to keep the price as low as possible and keep it out of library market-only pricing.

The book is scheduled to be published in March.

The Synaptic Gospel is a book that examines the nature of religious communities from phenomenological and neurological perspectives.  While not a “neuro-theology,” I attempt to use what we know from science about plasticity to make conclusions about faith communities.