Series Title

Theory Redux series

Series editor: Laurent de Sutter

Published Titles

Alfie Bown, The Playstation Dreamworld

Laurent de Sutter, Narcocapitalism

Roberto Esposito, Persons and Things

Graham Harman, Immaterialism

Srećko Horvat, The Radicality of Love

Dominic Pettman, Infinite Distraction

Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism

Helen Hester, Xenofeminism

Franco Berardi, The Second Coming

Armen Avanessian, Future Metaphysics

This English edition © Polity Press, 2020

Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press
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Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3798-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Avanessian, Armen, author. | Wagner, James A., translator.
Title: Future metaphysics / Armen Avanessian ; translated by James C.Wagner
Other titles: Metaphysik zur Zeit. English
Description: Medford : Polity, 2020. | Series: Theory redux series | Translated from German. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book is an attempt at restating the importance of the great metaphysical categories of substance and accident, form and matter, life and death for the present: how our contemporary predicament forces us both to reclaim them and to give them a radically new twist”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019023993 (print) | LCCN 2019023994 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509537969 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509537976 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509537983 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Metaphysics.
Classification: LCC BD113 .A9313 2020 (print) | LCC BD113 (ebook) | DDC 110--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023993
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023994

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Acknowledgments

This book began with a spontaneous request in early 2018 from Francesco Manacorda, Artistic Director of the V-A-C Foundation. I was invited to curate a large-scale exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) that summer, which would involve me writing roughly ten short texts – on the topic of my choice – for as many rooms of the museum. The thematic freedom, along with the experimental opportunity to frame the rooms of the exhibition – itself a rehearsal for a future institution currently under construction – as the chapters of a yet-to-be-written book, allowed me to compose, undisturbed, what ultimately grew to far more than just ten wall or catalog entries, all of which found their way into this equally spontaneous book.

Of course, many of the ideas and motifs collected here have occupied me for quite some time, not least in collaborative works with close colleagues such as Victoria Ivanova (on the question of institutional realism) and especially Anke Hennig, with whom I was working on a book about questions of technology, politics, and gender at the same time as I was writing this one. I would like once again to express my gratitude to Bernd Klöckner and Joseph Wallace Goodhew for their editorial supervision of the German original. Many thanks as well to everyone at Polity Press who worked together with me on this project, including Elise Heslinga, John Thompson, my translator James C. Wagner, and especially Laurent de Sutter for inviting me to publish this book as part of his series.

This book was written, with a strong feeling of expectation, for the future (and initially dedicated to my “future family”). That future has since arrived as a joyous present. I dedicate this book to my son Adrian.