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Transformation in Contemporary French Philosophy

Edited by Emma Ingala, Cillian Ó Fathaigh and Gavin Rae

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£100.00

About this book

Traces the articulation of the concept of transformation across twentieth-century French philosophy, from Bergson to Malabou

  • Engages contemporary French philosophy through the notion of transformation
  • Reveals that the notion of transformation is heterogeneous and itself subject to transformation
  • Offers innovative readings of individual thinkers within this periodisation
  • Includes chapters on thinkers – such as Cornelius Castoriadis, Paul Ricoeur, Raymond Ruyer, Gilbert Simondon, Michel Serres – that are often ignored in discussions of contemporary French philosophy

This collection brings together an international range of specialists to explore the multi-faceted ways in which twentieth-century French philosophy affirms the fundamental importance of transformation. The essays enhance our understanding of how various individual French philosophers have conceived the term, including the innovative implications of their respective conceptions. They show that although emphasis is often placed on its heterogeneity and the differences between its proponents, twentieth-century French philosophy is fundamentally, if implicitly, shaped around a common focus on the primordial importance of transformation.

By engaging with the thinking of Bergson, Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Ricœur, Ruyer, Simondon, Serres, Castoriadis and Malabou, the contributors also rethink a range of issues, including ethics, information, ontology and politics.

Reviews

This collective contribution to work on French philosophy is both nicely heterogeneous and fully coherent. Its featured subjects are a striking departure from the usual suspects, while building on the state of the art. Its twelve chapters offer a fresh look at existing problematics and distinctive approaches to new material. It will be essential reading for anyone working on recent and contemporary French thought, writ large.
This excellent collection of texts, which exemplarily shows the radicality and vivacity of twentieth-century French philosophy, brings to the forefront how, throughout this tradition, philosophical discourses have always engaged in the task of transforming themselves incessantly by and through active transformations, and thus alterations, of classically inherited and received concepts and notions, meanings and practices, systems and methods. In effect, this collection proposes more than a series of interpretations, it also and more urgently provokes us to question further our history by taking on the responsibility of thinking philosophically a future for philosophy.
Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Problem of Transformation
Emma Ingala, Cillian Ó Fathaigh, and Gavin Rae

PART I: METAPHYSICS, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
1. Bergson and the Nature of Change: Adventures Across the Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Science of Transformation
Craig Lundy
2. Transformation of the Self in Sartre: Imaginary and History
Marieke Mueller
3. Simone de Beauvoir: On Transformation through Ambiguity
Sara Cohen Shabot
4. Merleau-Ponty and Historical Transformation: The Dialectics of Situation and Action
Jérôme Melançon
5. Beyond Violence: Milieu and Social Transformation in Fanon’s Psychiatric Writings
Cillian Ó Fathaigh

PART II: EVENT, AGENCY, AND DIFFERENCE
6. “The Great Pyramid is an Event”: Thinking Creativity and Transformation with Deleuze and Whitehead
Hannah Richter
7. Foucault’s Account of the Will: Making Sense of Historical Transformations
Tuomo Tiisala
8. The Transformative Power of Derrida’s Différance
Nicole J. Anderson
9. Transforming the Sound of Revolt: Kristeva, Moten, and Phonic Materiality
Sid Hansen

PART III: NARRATION, INFORMATION, AND ONTOLOGY
10. The Transformative Potential of Ricoeur’s Narrative Self
Katrina Mitcheson
11. Information as Transformation: Ruyer, Simondon, Serres
Ashley Woodward
12. From Magma to Plasticity: Transformation in Castoriadis and Malabou
Gavin Rae

Notes on Contributors
Index

About the contributors

Emma Ingala

Emma Ingala is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She specializes in post-structuralist thought, political anthropology, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Her recent publications include co-editing the volumes Philosophy across Borders (Routledge, 2025), Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021), The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (Routledge, 2019) and Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018). She has also been an invited Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Cillian Ó Fathaigh

Cillian Ó Fathaigh is Assistant Professor and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow in Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, Poland. Prior to that, he was a Lecturer at King’s College London and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He previously completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Scholar. He currently works at the intersection of political philosophy, European philosophy, and the philosophy of the digital, with a particular focus on the concept of institutions. His work has been published in prestigious international journals, including Philosophy and Social Criticism; Journal of Medicine and Philosophy; Angelaki; Paragraph; and Derrida Today. He is co-editor of Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism (Routledge, 2025—with Gavin Rae); and Derrida’s Politics of Friendship: Amity and Enmity (Edinburgh University Press, 2022—with Luke Collison and Georgios Tsagdis).

Gavin Rae

Gavin Rae is Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His research interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth century European philosophy, where he works at the intersection of socio-political philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, ontology, and ethics. Besides over sixty published articles and book chapters, he is the author of eight monographs, the most recent of which are The Politics of Reason: A Postfoundational Approach (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), Questioning Sexuality: From Psychoanalysis to Gender Theory and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), and Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth Century Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He has also co-edited six volumes, the most recent of which are Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism (Routledge, 2025—with Cillian Ó Fathaigh), Philosophy across Borders (Routledge, 2025—with Emma Ingala), and Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021—with Emma Ingala).