We Ourselves

Tristan Garcia is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lyon and an award-winning novelist. He is the author of La vie intense: Une obsession moderne, translated into English as The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Forme et objet. Un traité des choses (PUF, 2011), translated into English as Form and Object: A Treatise on Things (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). His other philosophical works include L’Image and Nous. His fictional works include Les cordelettes de Browser, En l’absence de classement final and Mémoires de la jungle. In 2008, he received the Prix de Flore for La meilleure part des hommes, translated into English as Hate: A Romance. Christopher RayAlexander is an independent scholar Abigail RayAlexander is Assistant Professor of French at Kennesaw State University Jon Cogburn is Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University. He is co-translator of The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession. Together with Mark Ohm, he is the co-translator of Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object, and is the author of Garcian Meditations: The Dialectics of Persistence in Form and Object (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

• Series Editor’s PrefaceGraham HarmanBook I: TransparenciesThe first person plural Everyone-we-I Three objections Every we is a system of divisions Conflicts of division The intersection model The transparency model The contour The overlap Transparency and opacity Re-covering The bottom Book II: Constraints1. The Ground of We 2. Dynamic 3. Domination 4. The End of We Bibliography Index

As an editor, I often issue warnings to writers about the presumptive we. When you say 'we', you make assumptions about who is included and excluded. We usually just avoid 'we' instead. In this book, Tristan Garcia builds a political philosophy around doing the opposite – keeping 'we', but exploding it into a thousand possible embraces.