Author Description

An advanced text for readers interested in the problems of human bodies and social organisations. This book's central problematic is to understand how our bodies relate to the processes and phenomena of social organisation. It begins with a definition of Man as an impossible species with no ecological niche, and traces the development of culture as our second nature. It then describes how communities have been built upon metaphors of the body, drawing upon extended examples from the history of pathological anatomy, medical institutions and medical technology. The argument then shifts to Gilles Deleuze's influential early works in the history of philosophy. How can Deleuze's monographs on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza be used to set out a post-structuralist philosophy of organisation? Incorporating and developing Michael Hardt's groundbreaking work in this field, Scott takes the reader on an extraordinary and rigorous intellectual adventure into a world of bodies and organisations.