Professor of Communications
University of Montreal
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Curriculum Vitae

While at Cornell I will be completing a book manuscript entitled Architectures of the Unforeseen: Arts of Relation. The project addresses issues of art, politics, and emergent experience through detailed analyses of the work of selected architects (Greg Lynn, Lars Spuybroek, Arakawa & Gins) and interactive artists (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Robert Irwin). The aim is to develop a “radical empirical” approach to creative activity that replaces the notion of “interactivity” with a concept of “relationality” grounded in non-representational theories of perception developed in dialogue with recent currents in “enactive”  cogniton. The theoretical perspective synthesizes aspects of the philosophies of A.N. Whitehead, William James, C.S. Peirce, Suzanne Langer, and Gilbert Simondon. The concepts developed center on the notions of “dynamic form” and the “occurrent arts.”

Brian Massumi specializes in the philosophy of embodied experience, media theory, and political philosophy. His research is two-fold: the experience of movement and the interrelations between the senses, in particular in the context of new media art and technology; and emergent modes of power associated with the globalization of capitalism and the rise of preemptive politics. He is currently completing a book project entitled Perception Attack: Philosophy of Experience for Times of War (MIT Press). His previous publications include Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke University Press, 2002), A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (MIT Press, 1992), and First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (with Kenneth Dean; Autonomedia, 1993). He is editor of The Politics of Everyday Fear (University of Minnesota Press, 1993) and A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (Routledge, 2002) and was the founding editor of the University of Minnesota Press book series Theory Out of Bounds (1991-2006; co-edited by Michael Hardt and Sandra Buckley). His translations from the French include Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus and Jacques Attali’s Noise. He is a professor in the Communication Department of the Université de Montréal, where he directs the Workshop in Radical Empiricism (Atelier en empirisme radical). With Erin Manning of the SenseLab, Concordia University, he co-organizes a series of events and activities, under the title “Technologies of Lived Abstraction,” dedicated to the collective exploration of new ways of bringing philosophical and artistic practices into collaborative interaction. Also with Erin Manning he edits an MIT Press book series of the same title.

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