COMMENTARy Deadly algorithms Can legal codes hold software accountable for code that kil s? Susan schuppli Algorithms have long adjudicated over vital processes that help to ensure our wellbeing and survival, from pacemakers that maintain the natural rhythms of the heart, and genetic algorithms that optimise emergency response times by cross-referencing ambulance locations with demographic […]

‘For all that gives rise to an inscription in general’ hans-Jörg Rheinberger * This is a translation of ‘Al es, was überhaupt zu einer Inskription führen kann’, the first chapter of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Iterationen [Iterations], Merve Verlag, Berlin, 2005, pp. 9–29. It is published here with the kind permission of Merve Verlag. Its title cites Liechtensteiner […]

Helen macfarlane Independent object David black and ben watson Talking of the destructive nature of egoistic desire, its satisfaction that the other is nothing, Hegel made room for further development, an empirical moment which might surprise those who think German Idealism only ever allowed for abstraction: ‘In this satisfaction, however, experience makes it [the simple […]

The contingency of cheese On Fredric Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism David cunningham Fredric Jameson has been a busy man over the last decade. As well as two massive tomes on science fiction and modernism, combining republished essays with extensive new material, there has been a trilogy of books on Hegel and Marx which have […]

A metaphysical turn? Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into Modes of Existence Patrice maniglier A book bearing the title An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, but with the subtitle An Anthropology of the Moderns,* will immediately prompt the question: is this a work of metaphysics, as suggested by the title (which was lifted from the philosopher […]

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in questioning the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy. Although there are many different components to emerging post-analytical and post-continental philosophies, there are two dominant and overlapping themes that return time and again. On the one hand, there are investigations into what Livingstone, in The […]

CONFERENCE REPORT Critical philosophy of race: here and now 5–6 June 2014, Senate House, University of LondonConceived as a political intervention into British philosophy, the aim of the ‘Critical Philosophy of Race: Here and Now’ conference was to bring about a confrontation between debates in the critical philosophy of race (CPR) and the analytic philosophical […]

Andrew Collier, who died on 3 July after more than a decade living with cancer, was a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective during the 1990s and a longstanding contributor to the journal. Born in Edmonton, North London, towards the end of World War II, he attended Bedford College, University of London (later to […]