Michel Serres
Brief description of book project
It is impossible to engage with the work of Michel Serres without being challenged by questions of limits, borders, and boundaries. This research traces Serres’s approach to these in a range of his works revolving around the history and philosophy of science, technology, art, literature, politics, and law (1969-2019), in particular in relation to geometry, topology, and the concept of entropy. These analyses emerged from the observation that Serres’s work, at first sight, has a rather reserved relation to limits. His reservations towards limits as ontological givens, as politically non-negotiable, or straightforwardly socially constructed turn out to be highly productive. This informs a Serresian philosophy of limits that takes what the philosopher calls the North-West-Passage: a route that traverses lines between the sciences and the humanities. Within French-speaking philosophy and beyond, this confirms Serres to be a crucial thinker of limits in their irreducible plural, naturalist and critical function.
In this process, I also used drawing to investigate limit formations in the work of Michel Serres. This culminated in a series of drawings and short texts published as the book “Alignments. Drawing as a Way of Thinking––a Response to the Work of Michel Serres” (Berlin, 2025).
Text and Drawings: Lilian Kroth
Layout Text: Marie Artaker
Layout Images: Sarah Mutschler
Cruz, Marta. ‘Alignments: Drawing as a Way of Thinking – A Response to the Work of Michel Serres, Lilian Kroth (2025)’. In Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, 10:273–77. no. Territorial Inscription: Drawing Out Bodies. Intellect, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1386/drtp_00168_5
Kroth, Lilian. Alignments. Drawing as a Way of Thinking – A Response to the Work of Michel Serres. Berlin: KRAUTin Verlag, 2025.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘Draw Me a Limit, and I’ll Tell You a Structure. On the Process of Distinguishing Limit Formations’. In Drawing Across X Along X Between University Borders. Approaches to Drawing Research Across Disciplines, edited by Paulo Luís Almeida, Mário Bismarck, Maria Catarina Silva, and Pedro Alegria, 184–200. i2ADS Editions, 2025. https://doi.org/10.34626/i2ADS/2025-0001.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘Entropy and Entropic Differences in the Work of Michel Serres’. Theory, Culture & Society 41, no. 2 (2024): 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764231187593.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘Entropy’s Critical Translations: Following Serres’s Path through the North-West-Passage’. Technophany, A Journal for Philosophy and Technology 2, no. 1 (November 2023): 1–19.https://doi.org/10.54195/technophany.14313.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘Infrastructure, Translation, and Metaphor. A Reflection on Infrastructure’s Epistemic Framework and Metaphorical Displacements with Michel Serres and Bruno Latour’. In Broken Relations: Infrastructure, Aesthetics, and Critique, edited by Martin Beck, Beatrice von Bismarck, Sabeth Buchmann, and Ilse Lafer, 45–65. Leipzig: Spector Books, 2022.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘Property and “Le Propre”: Limits, Law, and a New Naturalism with Michel Serres’. Environmental Ethics 46, no. 1 (2024): 71–89. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics202422371.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘REDEFINING LIMITS: Entropy and a New Natural Contract.’ Angelaki 29, no. 4 (2024): 35–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2024.2382589.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘The Ocean in the Court. Navigating Metaphors of Law and Sea’. Angelaki 30, no. 1 (2025): 66–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2025.2454827.
Kroth, Lilian. ‘Critique Emerging from Marshes and Mushrooms: Parasitism and Desterilisation in Serres and Tsing’. In Parasitissimi, edited by Vincenzo Cuomo and Igor Pelgreffi, 93–115. Annuario Kaiak, no. 7. Pompei: Kaiak Edizioni, 2022.