Acknowledgements
It would not have been possible to complete this project without the inestimable support of Etienne Balibar, Rok Benčin, Nathan Brown, Harrison Fluss, Landon Frim, Josef Fulka, Peter Hallward, Roman Kanda, Ivan Landa, Jean Matthys, Warren Montag, Vittorio Morfino, Charlie Post, and Panagiotis Sotiris, and at Brill HM, Danny Hayward and Marlou Meems. At the IMEC, discussions with François Bordes crucially helped test and develop these arguments, and Allison Demailly offered invaluable assistance obtaining manuscripts from Althusser’s archive. In Prague, my colleagues at the Philosophical Institute – including Ivan Landa, Petr Kužel, Jana Berankova, Michael Hauser, and Joe Grim Feinberg – continue to offer invaluable intellectual inspiration, as well as critical perspectives on my arguments on Marx, Althusser, Badiou, and Bolzano. Others for whose assistance, insights, and support I am grateful include Emily Apter, Alain Badiou, Banu Bargu, Riccardo Bellofiore, Yann Moulier Boutang, Svenja Bromberg, Rebecca Comay, Chad Córdova, Sam Diiorio, Maxfield Evers, Jackson Smith, Ruo Jia, Elena Louisa Lange, Philippe Le Goff, Rob Lehman, Jacques Lezra, Tracey McNulty, Gregor Moder, Donald Moerdijk, Alberto Moreiras, Bertrand Ogilvie, Knox Peden, Seth Rogoff, Max Tomba, Gabriel Tupinambá, McKenzie Wark, Audrey Wasser, and Szymon Wróbel. Love and gratitude above all to Eva Cermanová.
Earlier versions of two of these chapters have previously appeared: Chapter 2 in the volume Pierre Macherey and the Case of Literary Production (Warren Montag and Audrey Wasser, eds., copyright © 2022 by Northwestern University), and Chapter 5 as ‘Capital, Logic of the World’ (Filosovski Vestnik FV XLII 2).
This book was written as part of the grant project GA19–20319S ‘From Bolzano to Badiou. An Investigation of the Foundations of Historical Epistemology and Modern European Philosophy’, supported by the Czech Science Foundation and coordinated by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, and benefitted as well from the support of Princeton University.
I dedicate this book to our beautiful, beloved son Rafael:
EVP39SMens nostra, quatenus intelligit, aeternus cogitandi modus fit. … In hac vita igitur apprime conamur, ut Corpus infantiae in aliud eique conducit, mutetur, quod ad plurima aptum fit, quedque ad Mentem referatur, quae fui, et Dei, et rerum plurimum fit conscia.