Collapse Vol. VIII: Casino Real

"The wager is situated on the dividing line between pure lived action and autonomous speculation: at once an impetus toward the future, recognition of a radical novelty, risk; and, on the other hand, an attempt at domination through the imposition of order, the establishment of symmetries. Its essence, the unification of these two constitutive themes, is far from being clear." - Jean Cavaillès, 1939 Collapse VIII examines a pervasive image of thought drawn from games of chance. In order to survey those practices in which intellectual resources are most acutely concentrated on the production and exploitation of risk, and to uncover the conceptual underpinnings of methods developed to extract value from contingency - in the casino, in the markets, in life - the volume brings together contributors who extend the philosophical thinking of contingency beyond the 'casino' model, gamblers whose experience gives them the authority to considerably refine our understanding of what it means to master chance, researchers who analyse the operation and experience of risk in diverse arenas, and artists whose work addresses both the desire to confront chance and the desire to tame it by bringing it to order. Alea iacta est!