Presenting critical essays on the work of arguably one of the most important French philosophers of the last 20 years, this collection provides an overview of Laruelle’s thought and an understanding of his contemporary relevance. Aiming to challenge concepts such as immanence, pluralism, resistance, science, democracy, Marxism, theology and materialism, Laruelle’s concept of ‘non-philosophy’ also expands our view of what counts as philosophical thought, through art, science and politics, and beyond. Reviewed by Miranda Nell.

Laruelle and Non-Philosophy. John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith (eds.). Edinburgh University Press. July 2012.

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Francois Laruelle is a current French thinker who has been writing for decades, but has only recently been translated into English. Although he has a small but enthusiastic following, he is not widely known in the philosophy world, and this collection is the first significant work commenting on his ideas. For those already familiar with him, the book will satisfy with a well-rounded introduction, ten essays engaging the material in diverse ways, a contribution from Laruelle, and an intriguing interview with him as well. The more interesting question is how this volume suits a reader new to Laruelle, and whether it makes a case for his merit.

The idea for which he is best known is the “non-philosophy” of the title; a concept that initially manages to sound both appealing and a bit dubious. For the continental or interdisciplinary thinker, the alternative mode of approach is attractive, and being a non-thing has potential as a poetic claim, but Laruelle has set up a harder road in defining himself in comparison to philosophy, since in doing so he has to define all of philosophy as sharing characteristics that he avoids. His supporters will point out that this concept is not meant to negate philosophy but is intended as an extension or rethinking, but the phrase sounds quite sweeping and Laruelle does not seem to shy away from making broad statements.

So what is non-philosophy? Simply put, to engage in non-philosophy (sometimes called “non-standard philosophy”) is to understand ideas not as the observations of privileged or transcendent perspectives, but as simply another part of what exists. Non-philosophy proclaims the impossibility of explaining the Real, and instead aims for smaller projects. Because it understands itself as another object in the world, a creative addition to nature rather than any sort of mirror or overview of existence, non-philosophy is meant to achieve what philosophy never has: avoiding difference, the Other, the division between subject and object. While philosophy considers these fundamental to human experience, non-philosophy considers them fundamental merely to philosophy, due to the way that philosophy operates. As Rocco Gangle puts it in his contribution ‘Laruelle and Ordinary Life’, “Non-philosophy rejects not philosophy but only philosophy’s self-legitimating and hence thoroughly relative circumscription of its Other(s). The Stranger [Laruelle’s name for the philosophical subject] thus does not opt out of the real world, but instead sees that the world itself as defined a priori by philosophy as a form of contest and enclosure… in fact opts out of the ordinary human real” (p.78).

The trick, presumably, is how to make observations without “opting out of the ordinary human real,” whatever exactly that is. Gangle’s essay explores both Husserl’s phenomenology and Ryle’s ordinary language philosophy as earlier attempts to move philosophy’s domain, but determines both of them failures in this regard. Ultimately it is their “decisional political model” (p.77) that is problematic: by rejecting a certain form of doing philosophy, they have set up exactly that form all over again.

Yet, can we not make the same accusation of Laruelle? The answer that editors Mullarkey and Smith provide in their introduction is that we should not consider non-philosophy agonistic at all: it is of a different kind but can happily co-exist with other approaches, including some generally given little attention in intellectual realms. Mullarkey provides insight into this interpretation in his essay ’1+1=1: The Non-Consistency of Non-Philosophical Practice (Photo: Quantum: Fractal)’ which discusses the potential of non-philosophy to shed light on performative and material expressions of thought. Laruelle has written on what he calls “non-photography” with a focus on the “photo’s non-specular manifestation of identity” (p.149, quoting Laruelle’s Non-Photography, p.112). The notion here can be extended into language and philosophy in general: words and ideas are not of or about things, but are things themselves. Non-photography and non-philosophy look not at the representations but the components of the world.

Or as we see in Alexander Galloway’s ‘Laruelle, Anti-Capitalist’ which takes up a Marxian perspective, Laruelle follows up on the idea that “the violence of capital is the violence of the equals sign” (p.193) with the conclusion that “there is no philosophy that is not too a philosophy of exchange”(p.193). In other words, where the critique of capitalist society is the endless range of quantification in the market, Laruelle is concerned with the philosophical conception of words and ideas as methods of quantification. Rather than being mysterious and potent, as it might be in a religious context or even a poetic one, language is used as a currency of exchange, explaining or reducing what a thing is.

In many ways it sounds familiar—the aim for immanence and the overcoming of the transcendental view dominated 20^th century philosophy—but Laruelle’s response is that it is more simple than has been envisioned. Rather than endless repetition, or accepting Wittgenstein’s judgement [of passing over in silence], he thinks we can take up a new mode of discourse that embraces creative and performative aspects and recognizes representation and even truth as our constructs.

Instead of the more subtle or ironic approach of talking about the talking about of the event, Laruelle pushes us to deal with the ‘talking about’ as a new event in itself that should not be categorized in relation, but is rather a simple, flat part of a unified world. Some will agree with Ray Brassier’s critique ‘Laruelle and the Reality of Abstraction’, that “his attempted suspension of the pretensions of philosophy… is more indicative of a frustrated philosophical agenda than of a genuine alternative…” (p.118) (and is a credit to the collection that this perspective was represented).

Perhaps it is the potential of the agenda that inspires new thought, and to be endorsed by philosophy would in the end be the worst outcome for non-philosophy, as it would ask for clarification which might result in that world of “contest and enclosure” so disliked. In the interview at the end of the collection, Laruelle describes non-philosophy as “a style of thought” (p.243) rather than a system, and so long as it is seen as an opportunity to try something on rather than a solution to an epistemological quandary, it has the potential to provide some interesting reading.

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Miranda Nell received her PhD from the New School for Social Research in 2012 and is currently teaching in Michigan. Her interests include aesthetic experience, the exploration of variety and flexibility in knowledge, and the importance of non-cognitive modes of expression. Read more reviews by Miranda.

Using case studies from Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Israel and India, Sexuality in Muslim Contexts argues that Muslim religious traditions do not necessarily lead to conservative agendas but can promote emancipatory standpoints. Olivia Mason thinks however you currently understand sexuality in Muslim contexts this book will definitely change it for the better.

Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Restrictions and Resistance. Anissa Helie and Homa Hoodfar (eds). Zed Books. October 2012.

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In Sexuality in Muslim Contexts: Restrictions and Resistance, a new book by editors Anissa Helie and Homa Hoodfar, issues surrounding the policing of sexual rights in diverse Muslim settings are explored. The book offers an original insight into the relationship between sexuality and bodily rights and discusses ways sexuality is restricted in Muslim contexts but also the ways women are combating these and resisting traditional understandings of sexuality. The editors argue sexuality is stigmatsed in Muslim contexts and detail culturally appropriate practices to combat this. The editors are clear to explain that religious identity is not the main focus of this book and that there are multiple reasons for sexual restrictions. The book’s main aim therefore is to share a more fluid understanding of Islam that encompasses issues over time and space. The book contains contributions from a wide range of actors from judges to activists to academics to create a book full of rich case studies and varied inputs.

The book is divided into two parts. Part I “Tools of Policing: The Politics of History, Community and Law” explores the history and context of Muslim countries. The chapters in Part 1 are about restrictions and investigate how people have used the term Muslim as a framework for control of sexuality in both Governmental and everyday cultural contexts. Part II “States of Contestation: Reclaiming Public Spaces”, explores the importance of public spaces and presents evidence of how Muslim societies are redefining and resisting constructions of sexuality and gender (p. 11). Resistance is important as in many Muslim countries sexuality is visibly restricted, therefore it is important and a strength of this book to detail the public spaces of resistance.

Understanding the restrictions placed on women’s sexuality are a key part of this book and in Chapter 3: “Moral panic: the criminalization of sexuality in Pakistan”, Hooria Hayat Khan explores restrictions through an examination of ‘honour’ killings. Khan argues that frequently women in Pakistan who conduct un-Muslim behaviour with regards to their sexuality become victims. Khan claims that the root of this problem is a patriarchal society whereby the law is not on the side of the women and families are rarely prosecuted by the justice system. Violence is used by men as a way of controlling sexuality, reinforcing masculinity and deterring other women in the family from mis-demeaning. Khan writes that in Pakistan laws are not implemented which have the good of the whole public in mind and the women’s movement must implement change that then enters the level of Governmental lawmaking. This chapter raises some fruitful thoughts surrounding who makes the laws and the culture of patriarchy, which has shaped laws surrounding marriage in Pakistan.

In Chapter 7, “Veiling transcripts: the private debate on public veiling in Iran”, Shadi Sadr focuses on the regime’s policy of compulsory veiling for all women in public through an examination of online space. Sadr writes that imposing this law has resulted in the “politicization of public space and mundane daily practices” (p. 183) and has meant that clothes and make-up have become political weapons. Due to the difficulties in researching public attitudes to these changes, there is little data, so the Internet should be seen as an important tool. Sadr was able to utilise a blog to ask women for their opinions on veiling, to argue there appears to be not a binary view as some believe but a wide variety of opinions. This ranged from some women believing it is imposed for a reason, to seeing it as a personal duty, while others saw it as a nuisance and objectification of their body. This chapter is fruitful in employing a research methodology that takes into account everyday stories to produce a wide variety of viewpoints on these restrictions to women’s sexuality.

When examining how women resist sexual oppression, in Chapter 10, “Living sexualities: non-hetero female sexuality in urban middle class Bangladesh” Shuchi Karim explores how sexuality for non-heterosexual females is understood in the patriarchal country of Bangladesh. Karim’s study concentrates on the private spheres of family life focusing on women who are contesting the female norm of heterosexuality (p. 271). Sadr explains that in Bangladeshi culture there are three types of homosexual relationships rendering non-heterosexual identity a contested sphere. Sadr’s chapter is interesting in its discussion of how women negotiate their different sexual identities and that sexuality in a Muslim context should be understood as fluid and interwoven with place. This argument is a convincing one in this book, with another chapter on Israeli family laws proving that in a Muslim minority country laws restricting women are bound up in place and society and not necessarily religion.

In the final chapter “Risky rights? Gender equality and sexual diversity in Muslim contexts”, editor Anissa Helie’s chapter asks us to consider the different ways that deny women and gay people rights. Helie explores why many Western views surrounding Muslim sexualities are often biased and urges us to challenge this. A crucial argument made by Helie is that when we declare ‘Muslim women’ victims we must also understand that there are many factors other than religion that oppress women. Helie writes that the policing of sexuality is not unique to Muslim societies and that gender equality is not a solely Western reform, sexual plurality existed in Muslim societies prior to their encounter with the West. Intersectionality matters Helie argues and sexuality is a contested and highly patrolled terrain in all societies (p. 307).

In conclusion, this book is one that should be read by all those interested in sexuality, religion, Islam, or gender. The wide range of case studies make it suitable for both an academic and general audience while the examples make it a stimulating and accessible read. This book urges the reader to consider Muslim sexuality from the local to global level and to understand there are both restrictions and resistance that are interwoven with not just religion but a wide range of factors. The only criticism to wage at this book is its tendency to focus overly on patriarchy as the main problem, with men overly blamed. While reasons for this are explained throughout when discussions of sexuality and gender are made, it urges the reader to question the relationship between patriarchy and religion. My concluding comment is that however you currently understand sexuality in Muslim contexts this book will definitely change it for the better.

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Olivia Mason is a postgraduate student at the University of Glasgow in the school of Geographical Sciences. Her research interests lie in gender, space, and power and feminist methodologies. Previously she has studied the role of tour guides in shaping the tourist gaze in dark tourist destinations in Bosnia. Her current research interests are in female Islamic blogging in the Middle East and how these blogs use emotional narratives to engage readers and create a new political space of active citizenship. Read more reviews by Olivia.

Social thinkers in all fields are faced with one unavoidable question: what does it mean to be ‘human’ in the 21st century? As definitions between what is ‘animal’ and what is ‘human’ break down, and as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and nano- and bio- technologies develop, accepted notions of humanity are rapidly evolving. Francis Remedios finds that although Humanity 2.0 offers challenging ideas, readers who work through those ideas will be rewarded.

Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future. Steve Fuller. Palgrave Macmillan. 

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As biotechnology, genetic engineering and synthetic biology are changing humanity, what does it mean to be human?  What is the distinctiveness of humanity? Given humanity is the locus of the social sciences, this book focusses on the changing boundary conditions of biology (race) and ideology (religion) for humanity. With the welfare state set as the location of the battle between biology and ideology on humanity, Fuller defends the distinctiveness of humanity.

The author first diagnoses the problem of humanity as a bipolar disorder between our animal nature (biology) and our search for transcendence of nature (ideology). Are we closer to animals as indicated by Darwinism or are we closer to God as indicated by Christianity? In today’s terms, the positions can be portrayed to be between the poles of Peter Singer’s animal liberation or Ray Kurzweil’s spiritual machines.

For Fuller, humanity, which is moral, is the central project of the social sciences. Humanity consists of socially organised resistance to the natural selection and natural forces through collective projects such as Christianity, the University and the State. Participation in large-scale projects allows humans to control or even reverse the effects of natural selection. For Fuller, the classical sociologists Durkheim, Marx, and Weber all concur with his characterisation of the project of humanity. Essential to Fuller’s concept is the redistribution of wealth through the state. Fuller recognises Foucault’s notion that the human sciences as a body of knowledge was created in the 19th century and by the 20th century, man has died – human sciences as a body of knowledge are in question. Fuller connects humanity to transhumanism, which is the view that humanity can be enhanced or redesigned through technology. With converging technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and computer technology, humanity can be transformed to an enhanced version of humanity – humanity 2.0. For Fuller, humanity 2.0 is an emerging object of social science and social policy. Fuller has indicated the core principle of social science is humanity, and he has extended it to the possible future of transhumanism. In my view, whether transhumanism occurs is difficult to say because even with converging technologies, it is not a linear progression from humanity to transhumanism.

How did the project of humanity start? Fuller avers that John Duns Scotus started the project of humanity with a univocal theory which predicates God’s attributes to man, while Thomas Aquinas has an equivocal or analogical theory of predication of God’s attributes to man. Fuller’s view is that for Scotus, man’s difference to God’s attributes is by degree, while for Aquinas, man’s difference to God is by kind. Humanity is created in the image and likeness of God. For scientists, Bacon, Newton and Mendel, who are Christians, doing science is participating in the mind of God. With the advance of the nanosciences, biotechnology and genetic engineering with which the future of life can be engineered, there have been many voices which claim science is playing God. From Fuller’s perspective, ‘doing’ science, particularly the nanosciences, biotechnology and genetic engineering, is to participate in God’s mind. However, this reviewer is sceptical. It would be very difficult to convince the public of this because many of the public take Aquinas’ view that humanity and God are different in kind and it is God who created life. The public fears that engineering of life may have the potential to do more harm than good.

Fuller takes on Darwninism with intelligent design theory (ID). For Fuller, ID is the view of the role of divine design in western science. In 2005, Fuller was an expert witness to defend ID to be taught in schools at the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial. The judge disagreed that ID is science since it is based in theology. In a controversial move, Fuller recommends the promotion of an Abrahamic theological perspective to motivate students to become scientists in the United States because of Abrahamic theology’s view that humans are privileged to understand and control nature as they are in created in the image and likeness of God. Many critics will disagree that Fuller needs this controversial move since many scientists in the West are not motivated by Abrahamic theology and scientists in countries such as China or India are not brought up as Christians.

As humanity 2.0 will push against boundaries of morality, Fuller links theodicy to humanity 2.0. Theodicy is the problem of evil in a world created by God. Fuller’s answer to alleviating suffering, which occurs with natural disasters or human deeds, is to suffer smart. He recommends moral entrepreneurship, which is to recycle evil into good through an agent who did evil deeds but has decided to do good. Fuller’s examples of moral entrepreneurs are Jeffrey Sachs, George Soros and Robert McNamara. McNamara, who was US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam war, later became the President of the World Bank. He lent money to the Third World to reduce poverty. His lending policies to the Third World had a negative impact because many poor countries were unable to repay their loans and there was corruption in some governments who were recipients of loan money.

Humanity 2.0 can be considered a milestone in Fuller’s work since it forms the locus of his discussions in his other works on the foundations of the social sciences. It is a complex book brimming with ideas on what it means to be human. As Fuller’s social epistemology is concerned with social transformation of knowledge, the exploration of the changing boundary conditions of the knower is critical. With the enhancement of humanity through biotechnology, genetic engineering and synthetic biology, the knower’s identity and social epistemic role can change. With advancement of computer technology and digital technology, avatars can be created and the identity of knower and social epistemic role is extended through avatars. The interface between the knower and the world has changed because the knower can be changed either through human enhancement or avatars.  Those who are interested in the foundation of the social sciences and its intersection with biology, theology and transhumanism would benefit from reading this book. I recommend this book since it goes beyond traditional issues of social science to include discussions of biology, theology, transhumanism and the history of sociology in the UK such as the founding of the first chair of sociology at the London School of Economics in 1907. Though the book offers challenging ideas, readers who work through those ideas will be rewarded.

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Francis Remedios is a Canadian independent scholar with his PhD from Institute of Philosophy, University of Leuven. His research areas are social epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of the social sciences.  His 2003 book, Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge, was on Steve Fuller’s social epistemology. He has published several articles and book reviews on social epistemology and he is a member of the editorial board of the journal Social Epistemology and the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. Read more reviews by Francis.

Malise Ruthven is recognised as one of foremost commentators on the Islamic world and its relations with the predominantly secularized and Christian societies of the West. In Encounters With Islam he seeks to offers astute and topical insights across the whole spectrum of Middle East and Islamic studies. These essays will be widely appreciated by students, specialists, and general readers, finds Marco Scalvini.

Encounters With Islam: On Religion, Politics and Modernity. Malise Ruthven. I.B. Tauris. 2012.

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Encounters With Islam is a collection of almost 30 essays and reviews written between 1981 and 2011 by Malise Ruthven for a variety of publications including The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, and The Guardian. Bringing them all together for the first time, Ruthven aims to provide an incisive understanding of the key political and religious issues facing the Middle East and the troubled relationship between Islam and the West, covering historical events such as the Iranian revolution, societal issues such as the problems posed for Muslims as minority immigrants living in Western countries, and a retrospective of the Rushdie’s affair 20 years after the publication of The Satanic Verses. Such a wide variety of topics alongside general overviews of several key works and authors in the field combine to make a review of this book a little problematic, so for this reason I have focused on what I believe to be the main contribution that the book brings to the study of Western anti-Muslim rhetoric: the Muslim as ‘the Other’.

Part One reviews some of the controversies engendered by the Clash of Civilisations debate, sparked twenty years ago with the publication of Samuel P. Huntington’s controversial essay, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ The essay, which later became a book, argues that the world is divided into cultural blocks, each with its own distinct set of values. The Islamic civilization, Huntington wrote, is the most bothersome for the West as Arabs do not share the same ideals of the Western world, and can be defined as hostile to liberal values such as pluralism, tolerance, and democracy.

In the essay ‘Politics and the Prophet’, Ruthven challenges Hungtington’s thesis by relating Michael Gilsenan’s fieldwork on the patriarchal culture of Islam to Fred Halliday’s Islam and the Myth of Confrontation. Gilsenan observed the assertion of power through violence of a Muslim village in Lebanon and the obsession with gender and status. However, Gilsenan argues that these masculine values characterise many non-Muslim societies of the Mediterranean area and cannot be related either to a specific characteristic of Islamic culture or texts. According to Halliday, the appeal of Islamist movements in the Middle East should instead be connected to the lack of economic development and political change caused by the crisis of post-colonial transition. In his analysis of confrontational rhetoric of both Islamic and anti-Muslim positions, Halliday points to the intellectual similarity of both ‘Huntingtonians’ and militant ‘Islamists’.

Ruthven claims to not completely reject Huntington’s thesis, yet the first part of this book offers several perspectives on why the simplistic reduction of Islam as an opposite or Other should be challenged. Ruthven notes Jack Goody’s Islam in Europe, Carl W. Ernst’s Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in The Contemporary World, and Bruce Lawrence’s New Faiths, Old Fears as discussions from different disciplinary traditions that highlight the commonalities between Islamic and Western cultures.

Ernst argues that the rejection of Islam as an integral part of Western society lies in a narrative deeply-rooted in centuries of reciprocal confrontation with Islam. Ernst rejects that these differences are irreconcilable, and supports an Islamic-Christian model of civilization in which Islam and the West are “historical twins whose resemblance did not cease when their path diverged” (p. 13).

To support Ernst’s thesis, Ruthven introduces Tariq Ramadan’s book Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Ramadan is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, and in his book emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of Western Muslims and advocates a hermeneutic study of Islamic texts and a contemporary re-interpretation of some Islamic tenets. Ramadan commits to develop a Western Muslim syncretism aimed at integrating the core principles of Islam with occidental values. In particular, Ruthven discusses how Ramadan addresses Muslims to avoid self-segregation and presses them to become model citizens. Lawrence also offers examples of the ways in which Islam in the West is by no means always antagonist and immutable. In his examination of south-Asian immigrants in America, Lawrence observes the adoption, not rejection, of new local norms and values.

In Part Two, Ruthven explores further the “myth of confrontation” by focusing on terrorism and counter terrorism strategies in the war on terror. Although the author claims that it would be wrong to deny that there is also a religious dimension in modern terrorism, much of this confrontation between Islamists and the West is based on ideological assumptions, in which terrorists seek justification for their actions in the scriptures (p. 42). Conversely, the strategy against terrorism adopted by the West is also deeply constructed on wrong perceptions of Islam and a misunderstanding of the real causes of terrorism. In addition, the author offers valuable elements of linguistic reflection on the West which reproduce and reinforce some ideological views. For example, the definition of terrorism is based on a slippery classification (p. 44), how the concept of the ‘war on terror’ (p. 45) was based on an absurd metaphor or how the attribution of Muslim to terrorist attacks is always instrumental, as the media do not label for example, the Oklahoma City bombing as Christian (p. 51).

In conclusion, the book is carefully organised and offers a very good starting point for the study of the relationship between Islam and the West. Offering an overview of the work of some key authors in the literature, it will certainly be appreciated by general readers looking for a variety of perspectives on topics which are seldom out of the media and academic spotlights. For well-read social scientists generally looking for more detail and evidence however, these essays lack the traditional bibliographic notes, and references and do not follow an academic style.

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Marco Scalvini is a LSE100 Class Teacher. His background includes also professional experience as a media professional in public and political  communication (UNESCO, OSCE, UN, G8/G20). His  PhD thesis is based on a discourse analysis of the public debate on Islam in Europe. It critically reflects on the apparent incongruity between the affirmation of universal citizenship norms and the portrayal of Muslim migrants as a contemporary threat to European cohesion and stability. He tweets @marcoscalvini and more information about him is available on his LSE profile. Read more reviews by Marco.

Straightforward, combative, and radical with regard to both contents and method, this book considers Jean Baudrillard’s contributions to the literature on theory as poetry. With lashings of quotes from the works of this unique intellectual voice and thought-provoking takes on Baudrillard’s ideas, the book will certainly appeal to many intrigued readers, finds Thorsten Botz-Bornstein.

Jean Baudrillard: From the Ocean to the Desert, or the Poetics of Radicality. Gerry Coulter. Intertheory Press. December 2012.

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher, sociologist and media theorist representative of post-structuralist thought. He is most famous for his theory of simulation in contemporary culture as well as for his theorizations of terrorism, both of which combined led him to the formulation of the provocative statement that “the Gulf War never took place.” Baudrillard’s suggestive and at times poetical style made him popular beyond academic circles, but also gained him the reputation of being a not very rigorous and scientific thinker. Gerry Coulter’s book sheds light on these problems and shows that, in spite of a language that can appear untypical within academic discourse, Baudrillard’s arguments remain sound.

Coulter teaches sociology at Bishop’s University in Canada and is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, a journal which publishes serious and comprehensive scholarship on Baudrillard and his reception. This certainly makes Coulter one of the main authorities in the field. Still the book is not technical at all, avoids any jargon, and should be interesting for students and scholars from all fields of the humanities.

Coulter reads Baudrillard through Baudrillard’s own concepts and convictions, which are above all, his idea of theory as poetry and the reversibility of systems. Baudrillard is established by Coulter as a poet suspicious of empirical methods. Such accounts of Baudrillard might reaffirm Baudrillard’s reputation as a “non-serious” theorist, but still I am glad that Coulter spells out Baudrillard’s position so clearly because it allows us to reflect it against a larger spectrum of contemporary problems. The book is straightforward, combative, and radical with regard to both contents and method. Coulter quotes from forty-five books by Baudrillard and uses only two secondary works. Obviously Coulter knows where he wants to go. Coulter divides the book into three thematic sections, but it seems to me that the book’s structure works through a progressive highlighting of some of Baudrillard’s ideas.

Baudrillard’s principal idea – that of reversibility – is a model that can be detected as an underlying pattern intrinsic to post-modern culture. All systems based on techniques, science, and logic are bound to run empty sooner or later because technical perfectionism kills the enigmatic surplus or the quantity of the “unknown” that philosophical investigations should maintain if they want to be interesting and fruitful as philosophies and not merely as scientific accounts of realities. The list of instances explaining how systems can be undone by their own systematicy is long:

• theory is killed by the “terrorism of meaning” enforced by systematical and empirical studies;
• in universities, “perfect” and overwhelming administrations kill education;
• the closer we approach events through “real time coverage” the more we are losing contact with the world’s  reality;
• because we are “overinformed” by the media we end up knowing nothing;
• the hysterical pursuit of security leads to insecurity;
• in cinema, perfectionist digitalization and virtualization kill any sense of illusion;
• in architecture, computer-generated or visualized design produces a generic, over-perfected quality that kills any sense of place;
• philosophy, once it has become so “perfect” that it is restricted to logic and positivism, will no longer be meaningful as a philosophy;

“Reversibility” is not an empirical fact; its existence cannot be supported by data. However, as a philosophical observation it remains conclusive. Coulter calls “poetical” what I would call philosophical but this is merely a choice of words: “what makes Baudrillard’s thought poetic is his highly attenuated sense for reversibility – the fact that all systems create the conditions of their own demise” (p. 1).

In any case, a poetic/philosophical view of the world is here opposed to a scientific one. The question is: is the one who points out such possible or actual developments propagating a meaningless universe and radical relativism or is he merely detecting those moments of reversibility because his philosophical analysis yields such result? The answer is easy. Of course, the nihilist does not invent the ‘nihil’ but he merely sees it and draws other peoples’ attention to it. Still, many opponents of Baudrillard do not seem to understand this. A few times Coulter refers to “fundamentalists” (who can be of the religious, the analytico-scientific, or the Marxist variety). Those fundamentalists want to kill the messenger because he points to an absurdity that is obvious, but which empirically minded scientists as well as ideologically blinded or fundamentally religious people do not want to or cannot admit. Coulter shows that for Baudrillard, the task of philosophical thought “is to go to the limit of hypotheses and processes, even if they are catastrophic” (p. 27) and that he tries to live with it. It is not his blindness that leads him to a realization of the emptiness of the postmodern world, but his fearless search for reality: “Baudrillard is frustrated by his times – by what we gave up in cancelling our metaphysical contact and making another more perilous one with things” (p. 42) but contrary to fundamentalist, he does “not fear the emptiness of the real” (p. 30). He “had watched the world drift into delirium and it opened him to a delirious point of view” (p. 11) and this vision is “far better than the world of knowing which today is the world of the fundamentalists” (p. 22). The following quotation appears several times in the book: “He acknowledged that living without truth is barely more tolerable than living with it – which would be a kind of fundamentalism as did Marxist thought for most of the twentieth century” (p. 27).

The radical consequence is that philosophy should not explain the world through technical systems but reinstate it in its most enigmatic form: “The world is given to us as enigmatic and unintelligible – the task of thought, in his view, is not to add meaning to it but to make it more enigmatic and more unintelligible” (p.151, Impossible Exchange); philosophy should “remain as long as possible in the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought” (p.68 The Vital Illusion). This does not mean that philosophy should blur reality and produce confusion. On the contrary, it should point out and establish those unsolvable and enigmatic features in the clearest fashion. Theory or philosophy should function not only like poetry, but also like photography, whose conceptualization Coulter explains very well in the book. The task of photography is “to highlight and deepen an unintelligibility and enigmaticalness already present in a world which hides behind appearances.” This is why photography is, as Coulter shows with the help of a quotation from Barthes, “subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks” (p.38 Camera Lucida).

We could extend the thoughts about fundamentalism and ask: what about God? As a matter of fact, for God is true what is true for any truth at the time of postmodernity: neither Nietzsche nor Baudrillard killed him, but God suffered, at the hands of techno-science, the fate of “reversibility.” Looking at our hyperreal techno-world, it is obvious that transcendence has not been abandoned but that it became secular, which follows the pattern of the systemic collapse enabled through the principle of reversibility: “The death of God is the root of the perfect crime” and by trying “to make the world better” it went “from bad to worse” (p. 42).

Coulter addresses another provocative subject, which is that of Baudrillard’s reception in America. Baudrillard himself was wondering whether “it [is] not the bias towards reality among Americans, their ‘affirmative thinking’, the naïve and ideological expression of the fact that they have, by their power, a monopoly of reality” that stands in the way of an adequate understanding of his thoughts (p.81, Cool Memories) Coulter reflects this against that part of American philosophy that he calls the “protective American tradition” which goes from Emerson to Camille Paglia, but by which also Chomsky is affected. Finally Coulter asks: “Does it speak to a certain cultural inability on the part of, or perhaps, suggest even a tradition of public American intellectuals, to out of hand reject Europe?” (p. 109)

Coulter concentrates on the “essential Baudrillard,” on his joyful attempts to find a way out of the expectations of empiricism, which led his to various approaches of challenging the notions of the real.

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Thorsten Botz-Bornstein was born in Germany, did his undergraduate studies in Paris, and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University in 1993. As a postdoctoral researcher based in Finland he undertook research for four years on Russian formalism in Russia and the Baltic countries. He received a ‘habilitation’ from the EHESS in Paris in 2000. He has also been researching for three years in Japan on the Kyoto School, and worked for the Center of Cognition of Hangzhou University (China) as well as a at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He is now Associate Professor of philosophy at Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait.