Axiomatic heresy: the non-philosophy of François Laruelle

This is the first substantial article in English on the work of the French philosopher François Laruelle and his concept of ‘non-philosophy'

Re: Silences--: The Sensing of Sound

There is always a pressing need to make sense of the inexplicable. Research as teaching, writing as inquiry, texts as performative—we embark on a series of encounters and engagements. We draw and write lines in, and around, our experiences. Straightforward is not a geometry that sense, time, identity, or language takes. Usually, texts are considered to be the domain of authors but we ask that you engage with us as we explore how matter and fact warp and where theory is practice rather than applied, expressed, or attached to practice

The Obliteration of Truth by Management: Badiou, St. Paul and the Question of Economic Managerialism in Education

This paper considers the questions that Badiou’s theory of the subject poses to cultures of economic managerialism within education. His argument that radical change is possible, for people and the situations they inhabit, provides a stark challenge to the stifling nature of much current educational climate. In 'Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism', Badiou describes the current universalism of capitalism, monetary homogeneity and the rule of the count. Badiou argues that the politics of identity are all too easily subsumed by the prerogatives of the marketplace and unable to present, therefore, a critique of the status quo. These processes are, he argues, without the potential for truth. What are the implications of Badiou’s claim that education is the arranging of ‘the forms of knowledge in such a way that truth may come to pierce a hole in them’ (Badiou, 2005, p. 9)? In this paper, I argue that Badiou’s theory opens up space for a kind of thinking about education that resists its colonisation by cultures of management and marketisation and leads educationalists to consider the emancipatory potential of education in a new light

Close encounters of a critical kind: a diffractive musing in/between new material feminism and object-oriented ontology

For a number of years, new material feminists have been developing new theoretical tools, new modes of conceptual analysis and new ethical frameworks. Object-oriented ontology, part of the speculative realism ‘movement’, has been engaged in something similar. Yet these endeavours have often taken place in ‘parallel universes’, despite sharing – or at least colliding around – a range of somewhat similar ontological and epistemological commitments. Composed as a diffractive musing encounter in which insights are read ‘through one another’ (Barad, 2007: 25) in order to ‘attend to … details and specificities of relations of difference and how they matter’ (Barad, 2007:71), the article brings Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway, already a ‘foundational’ text for new material feminism, into an encounter with a speculative realist text of the same ‘foundational’ status, Harman’s The Quadruple Object. The article develops a notion of diffractive musing as embodied, sensory struggle which instantiates intellectual generosity as a mode of critique. Following this, it puts diffractive musing to work theoretically via an encounter between object-oriented ontology and new material feminism. Keywords : new material feminism, speculative realism, diffraction, musing, critiqu

Disentangling molecular and clinical stratification patterns in beta-galactosidase deficiency

INTRODUCTION: This study aims to define the phenotypic and molecular spectrum of the two clinical forms of β-galactosidase (β-GAL) deficiency, GM1-gangliosidosis and mucopolysaccharidosis IVB (Morquio disease type B, MPSIVB). METHODS: Clinical and genetic data of 52 probands, 47 patients with GM1-gangliosidosis and 5 patients with MPSIVB were analysed. RESULTS: The clinical presentations in patients with GM1-gangliosidosis are consistent with a phenotypic continuum ranging from a severe antenatal form with hydrops fetalis to an adult form with an extrapyramidal syndrome. Molecular studies evidenced 47 variants located throughout the sequence of the GLB1 gene, in all exons except 7, 11 and 12. Eighteen novel variants (15 substitutions and 3 deletions) were identified. Several variants were linked specifically to early-onset GM1-gangliosidosis, late-onset GM1-gangliosidosis or MPSIVB phenotypes. This integrative molecular and clinical stratification suggests a variant-driven patient assignment to a given clinical and severity group. CONCLUSION: This study reports one of the largest series of b-GAL deficiency with an integrative patient stratification combining molecular and clinical features. This work contributes to expand the community knowledge regarding the molecular and clinical landscapes of b-GAL deficiency for a better patient management

Amino acid synthesis deficiencies

In recent years the number of disorders known to affect amino acid synthesis has grown rapidly. Nor is it just the number of disorders that has increased: the associated clinical phenotypes have also expanded spectacularly, primarily due to the advances of next generation sequencing diagnostics. In contrast to the "classical" inborn errors of metabolism in catabolic pathways, in which elevated levels of metabolites are easily detected in body fluids, synthesis defects present with low values of metabolites or, confusingly, even completely normal levels of amino acids. This makes the biochemical diagnosis of this relatively new group of metabolic diseases challenging. Defects in the synthesis pathways of serine metabolism, glutamine, proline and, recently, asparagine have all been reported. Although these amino acid synthesis defects are in unrelated metabolic pathways, they do share many clinical features. In children the central nervous system is primarily affected, giving rise to (congenital) microcephaly, early onset seizures and varying degrees of mental disability. The brain abnormalities are accompanied by skin disorders such as cutis laxa in defects of proline synthesis, collodion-like skin and ichthyosis in serine deficiency, and necrolytic erythema in glutamine deficiency. Hypomyelination with accompanying loss of brain volume and gyration defects can be observed on brain MRI in all synthesis disorders. In adults with defects in serine or proline synthesis, spastic paraplegia and several forms of polyneuropathy with or without intellectual disability appear to be the major symptoms in these late-presenting forms of amino acid disorders. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the disorders in amino acid synthesis

Nihil unbound: enlightenment and extinction.

This book is a development of Brassier's PhD work (Warwick, 2001). It explores its philosophical theme across the analytical-continental divide by drawing a link between the revisionary naturalism of eliminative materialism in Anglo-American philosophy and a strain of anti-phenomenological, speculative realism in recent French philosophy

Alain Badiou: theoretical writings

Brassier's contribution to this collection is threefold: (1) selection of materials, (2) translations, (3) editorial essay. (1) The collection is conceived as a distillation of Badiou's philosophical project via selection of representative material from across the full range of his writings. (2) Brassier translated 10 of 18 chapters, and revised Toscano's translations of the other 8. (3) He co-authored the ‘Editors' Postface: Aleatory Rationalism', pp. 243–268. The practice of co-authorship of this essay was that sections 1-3 were initially composed by Brassier and sections 4-6 by Toscano; each author then reworked the other's contribution. This text was erroneously omitted by the publishers from the first (2004) print-run. It first appeared in the reprint of July 2005. It also appears in the 2006 ‘Impact' edition (ISBN: 0-8264-9324-6), pp. 260–286

The origins and ends of the mind: philosophical essays on psychoanalysis.

This collection is co-edited with Ray Brassier. It consists mainly of revised versions of papers presented at the conference ‘The Psychoanalytical Ontology of the Human' held at Middlesex University in January 2004, in collaboration with the Centre for Psychoanalysis and Philosophical Anthropology, located at the universities of Nijmegen and Leuven, and sponsored by The Partnership Programme in Science of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and British Council Netherlands. It includes two pieces by Kerslake: ‘Introduction', pp. 1–19 and 'Paradoxes of Normativity in Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Or, Is Castration Necessary?', pp. 57–83, a critique of Lacanian psychoanalytical theory from the standpoint of Hegelian phenomenolog