I was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1954. I majored in philosophy at Sydney University, where I did postgraduate work in epistemology and the philosophy of science. I admired and was working on the pluralist thought of Paul Feyerabend and James Hillman.
I then discovered the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard and taught myself French to be able to read their books. ANTI-OEDIPUS and RHIZOME in particular were a revelation to me.
So I came to Paris in 1980 to attend their lectures, which were brilliant. I also met my wife there. After 7 years in Paris we moved South to Nice, on the French Riviera (books are fine but I also need sun and warmth!) where I studied linguistics with Jean-Claude Souesme. I obtained the agrégation (specialising in linguistics) and am at present an English teacher in a senior high school and at the university.
I am interested in contemporary French philosophy on the general theme of « pluralism, individuation, and a world of becoming », principally: Bernard Stiegler, Gilles Deleuze, François Laruelle, Bruno Latour, Alain Badiou, but I also like Hubert Dreyfus, Stanley Cavell, and William Connolly.
My favorite SF writers are Alastair Reynolds, Neal Stephenson and China Miéville, and my two favorite philosophers are Paul Feyerabend and Gilles Deleuze.
AGENT SWARM 
So Terry – are you married – any kids? Never mind all that frog cerebral stuffing
How are you? here is a voice from your past
Bill O’Toole
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You’re the one hooked on cerebrality. Otherwise why would you stare at my blog, when a simple look at my facebook page would show you I am married with two lovely children: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1790229315561.2082199.1234452585&type=3
What about you?
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Excellent! I like both Neal Stephenson and China Miéville… I’ve written on Miéville on my blog. I see you read my Whitehead essay… I’ll add your blog to my blog list and begin following and reading through some of your back log.
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Happy Christmas, Terence!
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You too, Artxell! Blogons fort!
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Would you be interested in co-editing a text that shows the stupidity of the SR and OOO movement?
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Perhaps. Could you be more specific? Email: terencejohnblakeATgmailDOTcom.
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i certainly would!
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interesting!
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Dear Terence,
Just wanted to tell you that I have completely changed my mind about Philip K. Dick.
You are right. More work on him, the better.
Yours
James Luchte
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Glad to hear about your re-evaluation of the interest and utility of working on him. Is there any particular consideration that led you to change your mind?
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I have sent you a letter at your gmail account. Bit tricky with WordPress here…
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Hi Terry, given your interest in sic-fi, philosophy and the differentiation of individual and group identity, you might find this worthwhile: http://www.amazon.com/Cronix-James-Hider-ebook/dp/B00P1OHT2C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418674563&sr=8-1&keywords=cronix
— let me know if you’d like a free review copy, I’m on jameshider@yahoo.co.uk
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Terry,
Thought you might like this. Springer is giving away pdf’s of some of their older books. http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-011-3188-9
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Thanks, this is great.
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Hi terenceblake,
I just wanted to comment to thank you for sharing your thoughts freely online as I find them intelligent and extremely interesting! Your writing is of a standard far above the inane shit produced by the mainstream spectacle and of a quality that puts it, in my opinion, above the majority of individual thinkers blogs.
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Thanks.
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A proposal for an article
Dear Terence Blake,
I hope this message finds well.
My name is Saleh Addonia. I am a member of the editing board of Specimen web magazine.
Specimen is an entirely multilingual web-magazine, which through translation gives voice to the multifaceted world. Specimen’s contents are in every language and alphabet, potentially translated into and from any other language, from the original or from an existing translation. With a special inclination for second languages and hybrid forms. Specimen engages an ever-expanding network of writers, artists and thinkers, and foregrounds relation as the core of its approach.
For more information, please visit: http://www.specimen.press/
Specimen would like to take this opportunity and invite you to write an article for us. An article that would perhaps could touch on rhizome, difference, language, translation, minor literature. As we think that we are not far away from those concepts. Or perhaps, you could look at our website and decide what you would like to write.
As we are just starting, we have limited funds. We can offer 250 Euros. Also, future opportunity could arise from this commission
Personally, I have been following your blog for more than 3 years, almost weekly. I am interested on what you write about Deleuze, and I have always found your ideas insightful. And recently, I have read your wonderful article: Brain Falls: The Power of The Falls.
My email is: saddonia@gmail.com
We hope to hear from you.
—
Warm regards
Saleh
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Hello Prof. Blake, I’ve had trouble finding your email through traditional academic channels, so figured I’d reach out to you here. I’m a political theory / critical theory Professor currently residing in Charleston, SC. I teach at The College of Charleston and The Citadel (a tad ironic the last, from the point of view my research, but I find the irony satisfying and fulfilling in its own light). In any event, it seems we share philosophical interests (and, perhaps not surprisingly sci-fi interests. I’ve read all of Mieville and assigned his dissertation on Marxist international law for my Jurisprudence classes last year). My research interests are centered upon Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Deleuze into Ranciere et al. I’m currently putting together a sort of bizarre compendium that I’d imagine might be right up your alley. Loosely titled « Futurity and Contemporaneity. » I wanted to invite you to contribute to this endeavor and was wondering if you’d might reach out to me at jaltick@citadel.edu. I can send you the proposal and « introduction » (an introduction that, in Deleuzian-inspired fashion, will appear somewhere in the middle of this compiled text / audio / video compilation).
Thank you,
John Altick
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Great piece – thanks. Missing a few females on your list of influences – Barad, Stengers to name but two. If you have a chance / inclination / bored and want something to do … take a look at some of the work re: radical matter at https://rca.academia.edu/ProfessorJohnnyGolding . in any case – thanks for your work – hadn’t known it before and find it a bloody breath of fresh air!
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Greetings Terry (if I may) – I am wondering whether you could referee an article I have had submitted to the journal Shima – it’s on ‘The Metal Sirens of Jung and Deleuze: A Magical-Realist Epistemology’ – would that be possible? Best Wishes – Phil (from Sydney on a steamy summer’s day) prhshima@gmail.com
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Hello — I’ve been following your critique of speculative materialism, in an admittedly haphazard way, and just received from Academia.com the review of ‘Bells and Whistles’ tho I can’t tell when it originally appeared. May I ask a question which you may find naive, or already have answered: Does not diachronic ontology (an idea that very much appeals to me) belie « the concrete reality of the sciences »? I’m taking « concrete » as suggesting « unchanging through time ». I ask because one thing that is appealing about Harman is his rejection of scientism.
I’m also appreciating your resuscitation of Jung.
Best wishes, mshulgasser@gmail.com
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Hello Mark, my review of BELLS AND WHISTLES goes back seven years on my blog, very soon after it came out: https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/more-monist-idealism-review-of-graham-harmans-bells-and-whistles-more-speculative-realism/. I have repeatedly praised Harman’s anti-scientism, for example here: https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/in-praise-of-graham-harman/, and more recently here: https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/debating-ooo-the-spectres-of-scientism-and-de-noetisation/. Harman claims that time is unreal, merely sensual, as opposed to space, so I class his ontology amongst the synchronic. I do not see the « concrete » reality of the sciences as « unchanging », given that it has repeatedly gone through radical conceptual reorganisations. I am against relativism, and for realism both epistemological and ontological, but I think that Harman’s realism is far too specific, and its heuristic core is unable to withstand conceptual criticism. To conclude I favour Harman’s anti-scientism and anti-literalism but I think that both converge on a different type of reductionism (call it « poeticism ») that leads just a surely to de-noetisation as scientism does, only by a different, and in today’s scientistic times, less familiar, route. This explains OOO’s initial attractiveness (I myself was under its charm – for about two or three weeks) and final disappointment.
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