Seeing | Making —> Room for Thought is a book that functions as both argument and demonstration — using the montage principle to show how an arrangement of images can itself constitute a form of thinking, not illustration.
About This Book
What does it mean for images to think? Susan Buck-Morss answers that question not through conventional academic argument but through the structure of the book itself. Drawing on her longstanding engagement with Walter Benjamin and in direct conversation with McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's The Medium Is the Massage, this volume positions montage as an epistemological practice — a way of generating meaning through the charged space between images. Designed by Adam Michaels and Kevin McCaughey, the book integrates visual and textual material so that form and content are inseparable. It brings Buck-Morss' more experimental, visually engaged work to a broader audience and will resonate with readers across philosophy, visual culture, and graphic design.
Key Features
- 336 pages of interleaved image-text montage combining philosophical argument with visual sequencing
- Authors: Susan Buck-Morss, Adam Michaels, Kevin McCaughey
- Published by Inventory Press, 2015
What You'll Discover
- How the montage principle — the generative space between two seemingly unrelated images — can operate as a mode of philosophical thought
- Buck-Morss' expanded conception of visual epistemology, developed through her engagement with Walter Benjamin's methods
- A sustained dialogue with Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's The Medium Is the Massage, made legible through design decisions as much as textual argument
- How graphic design, when treated as a conceptual practice, can shape and alter the meaning of a scholarly text
About the Author
Susan Buck-Morss is Distinguished Professor of Political Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York. She is the author of The Origin of Negative Dialectics (1977), The Dialectics of Seeing (1989), Dreamworld and Catastrophe (2000), Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009), and Year 1 (2021). Adam Michaels is a designer, publisher, and cofounder of Project Projects, and founder of Inventory Press and IN-FO.CO; he received the 2015 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communication Design. Kevin McCaughey is a designer and founder of Boot Boyz Biz, a project-based research practice established in 2015 and based in New York.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 336
- Dimensions: 200 × 120 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781941753538
- Publisher: Inventory Press
- Publication Date: 2015
Perfect For: Philosophers, graphic designers, and visual culture scholars interested in the intersection of image theory, montage practice, and critical thought.