Transformation in Contemporary French Philosophy

This collection brings together an international range of specialists to explore the multi-faceted ways in which twentieth-century French philosophy affirms the fundamental importance of transformation. The essays enhance our understanding of how various individual French philosophers have conceived the term, including the innovative implications of their respective conceptions. They show that although emphasis is often placed on its heterogeneity and the differences between its proponents, twentieth-century French philosophy is fundamentally, if implicitly, shaped around a common focus on the primordial importance of transformation. By engaging with the thinking of Bergson, Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Ricœur, Ruyer, Simondon, Serres, Castoriadis and Malabou, the contributors also rethink a range of issues, including ethics, information, ontology and politics.

Emma Ingala is Associate Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She specializes in post-structuralist thought, political anthropology, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Her recent publications include co-editing the volumes Philosophy across Borders (Routledge, 2025), Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021), The Meanings of Violence: From Critical Theory to Biopolitics (Routledge, 2019) and Subjectivity and the Political: Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018). She has also been an invited Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of California, Berkeley, USA. Cillian Ó Fathaigh is Assistant Professor and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellow in Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, Poland. Prior to that, he was a Lecturer at King’s College London and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He previously completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Scholar. He currently works at the intersection of political philosophy, European philosophy, and the philosophy of the digital, with a particular focus on the concept of institutions. His work has been published in prestigious international journals, including Philosophy and Social Criticism; Journal of Medicine and Philosophy; Angelaki; Paragraph; and Derrida Today. He is co-editor of Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism (Routledge, 2025—with Gavin Rae); and Derrida’s Politics of Friendship: Amity and Enmity (Edinburgh University Press, 2022—with Luke Collison and Georgios Tsagdis). Gavin Rae is Professor in the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His research interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth century European philosophy, where he works at the intersection of socio-political philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, ontology, and ethics. Besides over sixty published articles and book chapters, he is the author of eight monographs, the most recent of which are The Politics of Reason: A Postfoundational Approach (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), Questioning Sexuality: From Psychoanalysis to Gender Theory and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), and Poststructuralist Agency: The Subject in Twentieth Century Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). He has also co-edited six volumes, the most recent of which are Subjective Agency and Poststructuralism (Routledge, 2025—with Cillian Ó Fathaigh), Philosophy across Borders (Routledge, 2025—with Emma Ingala), and Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Routledge, 2021—with Emma Ingala).