Author: Michael Wiedorn File Type: pdf p Segoe UIA career-spanning assessment of Glissants work as a philosophical project.p Segoe UIWith a career spanning more than fifty years as a writer, scholar, and public intellectual, Edouard Glissant produced an astonishingly wide range of work, including poems, novels, essays, pamphlets, and theater. InThink Like an Archipelago, Michael Wiedorn offers a fresh interpretation of Glissants work as a cohesive and explicitly philosophical project, paying particular attention to the last two decades of his career, which have received much less attention in the English-speaking world despite their remarkable productivity. Focusing his study on the idea of paradox, Wiedorn argues that it is fundamental to Caribbean culture and thought, and at the heart of Glissants philosophy.p Segoe UIThe question of difference has long played a central role in the literary and philosophical traditions of the West, however to think differently, Glissant suggests focusing elsewhere on the post-plantation societies of the Caribbean, and the Americas more broadly. For Glissant, paradoxical lessons drawn from the natural and cultural realities of the Caribbean can point to new ways of thinking and being in the world in other words, to the creation of what Glissant calls a new category of literature, and in turn to the attainment of his utopian political vision. Thinking through such paradoxes, Wiedorn demonstrates, can offer new perspectives on the old questions of totality, alterity, teleology, and the potential of philosophy itself.p Segoe UIMichael Wiedorn is Assistant Professor of French at the Georgia Institute of Technology.p Segoe UI**h3 Segoe UIReviewp Segoe UIThe books use of the central concept of paradox is both original and convincing, and allows Wiedorn to reframe many of the issues surrounding Glissants thought in a new and illuminating way. -- Celia Britton, author ofEdouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory Strategies of Language and Resistanceh3 Segoe UIAbout the Authorp Segoe UIMichael Wiedorn is Assistant Professor of French at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Author: Marcus Du Sautoy File Type: pdf Symmetry is all around us. Of fundamental significance to the way we interpret the world, this unique, pervasive phenomenon indicates a dynamic relationship between objects. Combining a rich historical narrative with his own personal journey as a mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy takes a unique look into the mathematical mind as he explores deep conjectures about symmetry and brings us face-to-face with the oddball mathematicians, both past and present, who have battled to understand symmetrys elusive qualities. From Publishers WeeklyWhen most of us think of symmetry, we think of looking into a mirror or playing patty-cake with a child. As Oxford don du Sautoy (The Music of the Primes) tells readers, this is only the tip of the triangle in the mathematical realms of symmetry, where symmetrical objects exist in dimensions far beyond our ability to imagine. The author takes readers gently by the hand and leads them elegantly through some steep and rocky terrain as he explains the various kinds of symmetry and the objects they swirl around. Du Sautoy explains how this twirling world of geometric figures has strange but marvelous connections to number theory, and how the ultimate symmetrical object, nicknamed the Monster, is related to string theory. This book is also a memoir in which du Sautoy describes a mathematicians life and how one makes a discovery in these strange lands. He also blends in minibiographies of famous figures like Galois, who played significant roles in this field. This is mainly for science buffs, but fans of scientific biographies will also find it appealing. B&w illus. (Mar.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistDu Sautoy specializes in symmetry, and that concept isinstantly visualized in thetiling of the Moorish Alhambra Palace, which initiates his tour through the history and ideas of his mathematical subject. This accessible introduction makes for a shrewd start, for, as seems congenital with mathematicians and their abstract pursuits,du Sautoytakes symmetry in this work to the nth degreespecifically, to the 196,883d dimension. But far from stumping his readers,the authorinveigles them with clarity about symmetrys foundational concepts, cast of mathematical heroes, and wry portrayals of the quirky personalities among his contemporary colleagues in group theory, as symmetry is technically called. The package works as well here asin his highly praisedThe Music of the Primes (2003), with the addition of imparting the personal frisson of making a mathematical discovery. Relating his triumphs, confiding his worry about whether, at age 40, hes still got the creative spark, du Sautoy well demonstrates that whatever discoveries he has yet to make, hes able to engage general readers in the cerebral dramas of pure mathematics. --Gilbert Taylor