6.5.11

Cynthia Haven - Stanford News on Serres

Here is another entry from Cynthia Haven that explores briefly the puzzle of Serres in North America. Despite having some very interesting and valuable ideas about ecology, synthetic thinking, pattern-recognition and communication and culture theory, Serres just doesn't have the uptake here that he does in France.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that there are real differences between NA and Europe and thus that appetites for certain forms and ideas are different. That variance may be encouraging in a world that some fear is becoming increasingly homogenized. The loss that we face in not reading Serres in NA is that we fail to encounter the distinctive flavour of his thought and the diversity that it can generate. That seems to be at the heart of what Cynthia is getting at in her post.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm pleased to share that the topic of Michel Serres' writings was a frequent and resonant one at this June's European Graduate School theory session. Having shared aspects of Serres and provided an introduction to several of my fellow theorists, I'm glad that many have begun reading Genesis, as well as The Parasite to begin their travels. Many have already commented back to me that they're very amazed at the writing of Serres, finding it remarkable to have such literature infused with very relevant theory.