Unlike Kordela's earlier works Surplus (2007) and Being, Time, Bios (2013), this book is less of a single project than a series of essays designed to fill in the rich tapestry of her project. As such, the basic framework of what Kordela is doing will be familiar to those who have read those other books, but with new branches and ideas added in strategic areas. The essays can also be read as self-contained pieces, even if the reader is familiar with Kordela's other work. The "epistemontology" in the title, by the way, refers to the melding together of epistemology and ontology that occurs in her work, thanks largely to Spinoza.

The first chapter "Words and things in the era of value, power, and biopower" is largely a restatement of the main thesis of Being, Tim, Bios - namely, that modern philosophy has seen a split between words and things, such that philosophers have tended either to focus on representation and its self-referentiality (the deconstructionists being the most recent example) or trying to return to reality while bypassing representation altogether. In the latter category, Kordela focuses her attention on Heidegger, Badiou, Deleuze, and Meillassoux.

The second chapter is an extended meditation on Alfred Sohn-Rethel, whose work I have not read, and so I cannot comment with any insight on its contents.

Chapter three is titled "Psychoanalysis and structuralism" and focuses, rather surprisingly, on the influence of both of these forms of thought on Deleuze. Kordela makes a convincing case that Deleuze is far more influenced by them than many Deleuzians would care to admit.

Chapter four looks at the tension between structuralism and dialectics in the light of Fredric Jameson's 2009 book Valences of the Dialectic. While admiring Jameson's argument that all modern and postmodern forms of thought are dialectical, Kordela argues that structuralist thought should be seen as different in a number of crucial ways.

Chapter five is an extended look at the interaction between art and value, including such thinkers as Kant, Nietzsche, Adorno, and Benjamin.

Chapter six returns to one of Kordela's central theoretical ideas: that Marx's theory of commodity fetishism is, alongside Spinoza's monism, one of the most crucial philosophical ideas in the formation of secular modernity. In this chapter she looks at how capitalism and psychoanalysis are intertwined, and so how Marx can help us understood who we are as modern subjects.

Chapter seven expands on the territory explored in the second half of Being, Time, Bios, in which Kordela examines the connections between labor, enjoyment, and biopolitics, this time with greater attention to Spinoza's "singular essence" and the "other side" of structure.

I probably would not recommend this book to first-time readers of Kordela, since its theoretical underpinnings are laid out in much greater details in her earlier works. Nonetheless, Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan is an excellent supplement to those books, an affirmation of the importance of her thought. ( )