BiblioVault - Books by Richardson, Michael

The Bristol Merlin

Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment

Leah Tether

Arc Humanities Press, 2022

The discovery of seven manuscript fragments of the Old French Suite Vulgate du Merlin in a set of early printed books in the Bristol Central Library hit global headlines in 2019. This book contains a comprehensive study of these fascinating Arthurian fragments. Beginning with an extensive contextual history, the authors reveal details of the fragments’ origin, their importation to England, and their subsequent journey to a waste pile in a bookbinder’s workshop, where they would be incorporated into the bindings of a four-volume edition of the works of Jean Gerson in the early sixteenth century. A full enquiry into the provenance of these host volumes sets out the possible routes from the bookbinder’s workshop to their final home in Bristol Central Library. Using multi-spectral imaging to read the damaged sections of text, the authors also provide a full edition and translation of the narrative contained in the fragments.

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Deep Currents and Rising Tides

The Indian Ocean and International Security

John Garofano and Andrea J. Dew, Editors

Georgetown University Press, 2013

The Indian Ocean region has rapidly emerged as a hinge point in the changing global balance of power and the geographic nexus of economic and security issues with vital global consequences. The security of energy supplies, persistent poverty and its contribution to political extremism, piracy, and related threats to seaborne trade, competing nuclear powers, and possibly the scene of future clashes between rising great powers India and China—all are dangers in the waters or in the littoral states of the Indian Ocean region.

This volume, one of the first attempts to treat the Indian Ocean Region in a coherent fashion, captures the spectrum of cooperation and competition in the Indian Ocean Region. Contributors discuss points of cooperation and competition in a region that stretches from East Africa, to Singapore, to Australia, and assess the regional interests of China, India, Pakistan, and the United States. Chapters review possible “red lines” for Chinese security in the region, India’s naval ambitions, Pakistan’s maritime security, and threats from non-state actors—terrorists, pirates, and criminal groups—who challenge security on the ocean for all states.

This volume will interest academics, professionals, and researchers with interests in international relations, Asian security, and maritime studies.

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Nonhuman Witnessing

War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World

Michael Richardson

Duke University Press, 2024

In Nonhuman Witnessing Michael Richardson argues that a radical rethinking of what counts as witnessing is central to building frameworks for justice in an era of endless war, ecological catastrophe, and technological capture. Dismantling the primacy and notion of traditional human-based forms of witnessing, Richardson shows how ecological, machinic, and algorithmic forms of witnessing can help us better understand contemporary crises. He examines the media-specificity of nonhuman witnessing across an array of sites, from nuclear testing on First Nations land and autonomous drone warfare to deepfakes, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic investigative tools. Throughout, he illuminates the ethical and political implications of witnessing in an age of profound instability. By challenging readers to rethink their understanding of witnessing, testimony, and trauma in the context of interconnected crises, Richardson reveals the complex entanglements between witnessing and violence and the human and the nonhuman.

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The Philosophy of Living

François Jullien

Seagull Books, 2015

This volume asks poignant questions about what it means to be alive and inhabit the present.

Living holds us between two places. It expresses what is most elementary—to be alive—and the absoluteness of our aspiration—finally living! But could we desire anything other than to live? In The Philosophy of Living, François Jullien meditates on Far Eastern thought and philosophy to analyze concepts that can be folded into a complete philosophy of living, including the idea of the moment, the ambiguity of the in-between, and what he calls the “transparency of morning.” Jullien here develops a strategy of living that goes beyond morality and dwells in the space between health and spirituality.

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Surrealism Against the Current

Tracts and Declarations

Edited by Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski

Pluto Press, 2001

The Surrealism Reader

An Anthology of Ideas

Edited by Dawn Ades, Michael Richardson, and Krzysztof Fijalkowski

University of Chicago Press, 2016

One of the most influential cultural movements of the past century, surrealism has been extensively studied within the framework of its contributions to art and literature—but its pivotal role in the development of intellectual ideas, both political and philosophical, has yet to be fully explored. Featuring writings from the 1920s up to the late 1990s, this anthology—the first of its kind in English—finally reveals surrealism’s diverse scope, its deep contributions to the history of ideas, and its profound implications for contemporary thought.

Including essays by leading surrealists and other major writers on the movement, the volume addresses the key themes of identity, otherness, freedom and morality, and poetry. The texts uncover, among other things, the significance of surrealism for the antifascist and anticolonialist movements and the various manifestations of surrealism in the years after World War II. Giving space to the many different voices that made up the movement, and placing them for the first time within a clear and coherent historical framework, The Surrealism Reader radically revises the popular understanding of what, and when, surrealism was—making this book an essential reference for students, scholars, and all those interested in the central place of surrealism within twentieth-century thought and culture.

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This Strange Idea of the Beautiful

François Jullien

Seagull Books, 2016

An exploration of what it means when we say something is beautiful.

Bringing together ideas of beauty from both Eastern and Western philosophy, François Jullien challenges the assumptions underlying our commonly agreed-upon definition of what is beautiful and offers a new way of beholding art. Jullien argues that the Western concept of beauty was established by Greek philosophy and became consequently embedded within the very structure of European languages. And due to its relationship to language, this concept has determined ways of thinking about beauty that often go unnoticed or unchecked in discussions of Western aesthetics. Moreover, through globalization, Western ideals of beauty have even spread to cultures whose ancient traditions are based upon radically different aesthetic foundations; yet, these cultures have adopted such views without question and without recognizing the cultural assumptions they contain.

Looking specifically at how Chinese texts have been translated into Western languages, Jullien reveals how the traditional Chinese refusal to isolate or abstract beauty is obscured in translation in order to make the works more understandable to Western readers. Creating an engaging dialogue between Chinese and Western ideas, Jullien reassesses the essence of beauty.

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