Gilles Châtelet (1944–1999) was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Paris VIII, and programme director at the Collège International de Philosophie from 1989 to 1995, during which time he worked closely with Félix Guattari, and published the important work Les Enjeux du Mobile: Mathématique, Physique, Philosophie (Seuil, 1993). In 1994 he joined the Laboratoire Disciplinaire Pensée des Sciences at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he had an active and influential role in the seminar, ‘Actuality, Potentiality and Virtuality’. In the year before his death he published Vivre et Penser Comme des Porcs (Éditions Exils, 1998), which became an unexpected bestseller. Posthumous collections of his work include Les Animaux Malades du Consensus (Lignes, 2010) and L’Enchantement du Virtuel (Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2010).
