PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
John Ó Maoilearca is an honorary professor at Kingston University, London. He previously lectured in the philosophy departments of the University of Sunderland, England, and the University of Dundee, Scotland. He has published eleven books, including Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010) and All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (2015). Ó Maoilearca specializes in the areas of Continental Philosophy, film philosophy, metaphysics (especially of time and identity), and metaphilosophy.
In this revelatory study of the intersecting interests of mystic Mina Bergson and her brother, philosopher Henri Bergson, O Maoilearca meticulously and cautiously tracks philosophical developments from nineteenth-century spiritualism to recent new materialism. In the process, he does no less than uncover occulture's and analytical philosophy's correlated investments in both spiritualism and materialism during the modernist period. This book will prove foundational to the study of modern mysticism as philosophical engagement and materialist analysis. * Dennis Denisoff, author of Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art, 1860-1910: Decay, Desire, and the Pagan Revival * Henri and Mina Bergson form one of the most enigmatic sibling duos of the fin-de-siecle. The unfamiliar reader might assume little common ground between the two-the former a highly respected philosopher, the latter a feminist occult leader largely unknown outside of specialist circles today. Exploring both siblings' thought in relation to the other and demonstrating their converging areas of interest, O Maoilearca offers a sophisticated, provocative, and beautifully crafted reconsideration of the relationship between Western esotericism and philosophy. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the ambiguous position of mysticism and magic in the Western intellectual tradition. * Manon Hedenborg White, author of The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism * Vestiges of a Philosophy performs its ideas with visionary urgency, as O Maoilearca sustains a diffractive reading of a vast array of sources-canonical works alongside obscure archival texts exhumed through meticulous archeology-that proposes conspicuous concordances between the thought of siblings Mina and Henri Bergson. The complex and exhilarating investigation significantly reconfigures the parallel Bergsonisms, contending with their strangeness and poetics, while aligning them with ideas of contemporary philosophy from Karen Barad and Francois Laruelle among others, in this volume's immaculate consideration of matter, memory, movement, and spirit. * Matthew Goulish, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago *
