Being and Neon

“This little book is a jewel of intelligence, finesse and culture, which takes a technical object and turns it upside down like Heidegger taught us to do with Van Gogh’s shoes.

What is striking is the ambition of this meditation on the maps of contemporary modernity, on the famous Grand Paris, on the subject, on the plural, without the postmodern red herrings of absurd quotation. Luis de Miranda takes a stroll, telling you that he’s taking a stroll, but he leads you with great mastery and knows where he wants to go. There’s nothing gratuitous about this encounter with the kebab shop sign on the Neon City dissection table. It’s more like a new Cartesian meditation after Descartes and Husserl: where the stove and its heat have given way to the twisting sound of gas in a tube. I am, I create, therefore I hear.”

 

Born of an unexpected encounter with a neon sign on the quay of the Louvre, this book was composed from a seminar given by the author in the winter of 2012. An inspired journey through the night, deciphering the halos of the past and the reflections of the present, to give voice to a certain magic of the future.

 

Luis de Miranda, philosopher, novelist and revelator of crealism, is the author of the acclaimed essay L’art d’être libres au temps des automates (Max Milo, 2010).