French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn

Madeleine Chalmers is Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Leicester. Her work revives modern French avant-garde writings to engage critically with twenty-first-century questions in the fields of science, technology, and epistemology.

• List of FiguresSeries Editor's PrefaceAcknowledgementsNote on EditionsIntroduction: Unruly TechnicsTechnologos1. The Technologos: A Sacrament of Synthesis2. Technics of the Fiat: The Metaphysical Machines of Jean Richepin, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Marcel Schwob, and Alfred Jarry3. Charles Cros and the Time of the TechnologosApocalypse4. Technics and the Apocalypse: Didier de Chousy5. Technics and the Virtual: Alfred Jarry and Henri Bergson6. The Therapeutic Algorithms of Raymond RousselOntotechnics7. Surreal Technics I: André Breton’s Toolbox8. Surreal Technics II: Tinkering with Gilbert Simondon9. Gilles Deleuze and the TechnologosConclusion: For the Love of TechnicsBibliography

Chalmers' masterful work reads a range of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French writers and thinkers in order to uncover a lineage of technological thought that sheds new light on contemporary non-human theory. Illuminating and insightful, this book is an indispensable contribution to current thinking about technics and the nonhuman turn.