Michel Serres

A critical assessment of this important contemporary thinker Christopher Watkin provides the first comprehensive introduction to Serres' thought from The System of Leibniz (1968) through to his final publications in 2019. Working from the original French, he engages with both translated and major untranslated texts, providing a true overview of Serres' thinking. Using diagrams to explain Serres' thought, the first half of the book carefully explores Serres' 'global intuition' - how he understands and engages with the world - and his 'figures of thought', the repeated intellectual moves that characterise his unique approach. The second half explores in detail Serres' revolutionary contributions to the areas of language, objects and ecology. Watkin shows that Michel Serres has produced a cross-disciplinary body of work that provides a crucial and as yet under-exploited reference for current debates in post-humanism, object oriented ontology, ecological thought and the environmental humanities. Key features:. The first assessment of Serres' thought as a whole. Provides a resource for scholars in philosophy, ecology, new materialisms, literature, the history and philosophy of science and the history of ideas. Brings Serres into conversation with other major thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy. Focuses on the repeated moves that characterize Serres' thinking, making his writing more accessible for scholars across disciplines and showing how his ideas can be brought to bear on new areas. Christopher Watkin is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.