The Philosophy of Isabelle Stengers

Situates Isabelle Stengers as one of the most significant figures in contemporary continental philosophy Explores four problematic conceptual complexes: constructivism; peace fabrication; resistance to the present; and reclaiming nonmodern practices Draws from the majority of Stengers’ texts, including monographs, co-written books and journal articles Positions Stengers as a key figure in contemporary continental philosophy Over more than four decades, the work of Isabelle Stengers has ranged widely across many different subjects, from the practices of physics, biology and chemistry to psychoanalysis, ethnopsychiatry, ecology, gender, climate change, animism, capitalism, witchcraft, medicine, drugs and the history of philosophy. Providing a comprehensive overview of Stengers’ work, this book situates her as a primary figure in a philosophical tradition extending from Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, William James, Henri Bergson and Felix Guattari to perhaps her main precursors, Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. In doing so, it explores how Stengers’ constructivism resists the hierarchical binarity characteristic of modernity, constructing the means to create coherence among problematic differences, a creation which could potentially transform the binary constructions of gender, capitalism and climate change.