Gaston Bachelard

Steven Connor is Professor of English and Director of Research of the Digital Futures Institute, King’s College London. He is the author of more than twenty books including The Madness of Knowledge (2019) and Dreamwork (2023), both published by Reaktion Books.

Connor suggests in his new book: 'Bachelard’s work was a dreamwork, both in the sense that it performs work on dreams and in the sense it gives of a self-amusing dream of what intellectual work could be.' But then what about the writing and the thinking? Connor has some good commentary on those activities too. - Michael Wood, London Review of BooksThis brilliant and patient account of the life and writings of the pre-eminent mid-twentieth-century French philosopher illuminates themes of scientific reason and imaginative poetics that dominated Gaston Bachelard’s wide-ranging concerns. Steven Connor’s book offers an astute guide through the puzzles and seductions of a stylistic master whose work remains crucial to contemporary thought. - Simon Schaffer, Emeritus Fellow, Darwin College, CambridgeIn this first-ever biography of Gaston Bachelard in English, Steven Connor not only narrates Bachelard’s life, but presents and explains his works in an admirably accessible manner. This book is an excellent introduction to Bachelard, and a very good read. - Cristina Chimisso, Professor of Philosophy at the Open University and author of Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the ImaginationSteven Connor's biography of Bachelard charts a riveting journey of this remarkable French thinker from postman and soldier to Professor at the Sorbonne and philosopher of imagination par excellence. It shows how Bachelard’s unique mind expressed a double fidelity to both rational science and poetic reverie. A creation combustion of images and ideas, to be greatly welcomed. The book is an intellectual delight. - Richard Kearney, Charles B. Seelig Professor of Philosophy at Boston CollegeA philosopher of science and literary critic, Gaston Bachelard (1884‒1962) was a pioneer of the view that science, as a product of human activity, is inherently dependent on human perspectives . . . Anyone interested in the works of figures like Foucault, Derrida, or Latour will find Bachelard interesting, primarily for his influence on such later French intellectuals. Recommended. - Choice