Speculative Realism

esoteric marism #1

by bossa screwanova

re: "a da vinci code for the being and event generation" edward w. said, noam chomsky, iain hamilton grant, ray brassier, quentin meillassoux, graham harmon...

indictment of origin of modern industrial academic machine indictment of origin of modern industrial academic machine

Comments on Graham Harman's response to my article, 'The Future of Speculation?'

by Wesley Phillips

On 6th May, Graham Harman responded on his blog to a passage from my article, ‘The Future of Speculation?’, which... more On 6th May, Graham Harman responded on his blog to a passage from my article, ‘The Future of Speculation?’, which appeared a couple of days earlier in Cosmos and History. As Harman points out, I gave a version of this paper at SEP in York last year, but we didn’t meet on that occasion (I did however ask him about the place of ‘value’ in his system, which he rightly took to be a question about ‘politics’). I shall briefly respond to his remarks, which are reproduced further below. My numbers roughly correspond to those of Harman. Unfortunately, it was not possible to comment on the blog itself because it does not permit comment.

The Future of Speculation?

by Wesley Phillips

in Cosmos and History, Vol 8, No 1 (2012)

The emergence of a philosophical movement amidst the precarious situation of 'continental philosophy' is today... more The emergence of a philosophical movement amidst the precarious situation of 'continental philosophy' is today notable. Whilst welcoming a turn to questions of speculation and realism, this article will contend that speculative realism has misplaced the concept of speculation. Its quasi-naturalism prevents it from relating ‘necessary contingency' to any future-oriented task. What, then, is the future of speculative realism? I will examine the extent to which the phenomenon may at least prompt a self-problematisation of historical materialism, amidst the ongoing problem historical totalisation.

My case study is Iain Hamilton Grant's Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (2006), for the reason that it allows for a clear comparison between ‘Schellingian naturephilosophy' and its competing, Hegelian and Hegelian-Marxist alternatives. Hegel's speculative philosophy of history faces a set of problems of its own. In contrast to Grant's reading of Schelling, an examination of the relationship between Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and the middle Schelling can address some of these problems. An alternative future to research on speculation is outlined.

Must We Persist to Continue

by Jairus Grove

Reality Chunking

by David Roden

Review of Manual Delanda, Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason, London: Continuum, 226 pp. Forthcoming in Deleuze Studies.

Latour, Prepositions and the Instauration of Secularism

by Anna Strhan

published in Political Theology, Vol. 13, No.2, 2012

Bruno Latour’s understanding of different modes of existence as given through prepositions offers a new approach to... more Bruno Latour’s understanding of different modes of existence as given through prepositions offers a new approach to researching “secularism,” taking forward attention paid in recent scholarship to its historically contingent formation by bringing into clearer focus the dynamics of its relational and material mediations. Examining the contemporary instauration of secularism in conservative evangelical experience, I show how this approach offers a new orientation to studying secularism that allows attention to both its history and its material effects on practice. This shows how Latour’s speculative realism extends and provides a bridge between both discursive analysis of religion and secularism and the recent turn towards materiality in empirical study of religion.

Between Naturalism and Rationalism: A New Realist Landscape

by Fabio Gironi

A review essay of  Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. and Harman, G. 2011. The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism. Melbourne: re.press.

Forthcoming in the Journal of Critical Realism

Missives from the Fortress of Uncertainty: an interview with Graham Harman

by Diarmuid Hester

published by 'MUTE: CULTURE AND POLITICS AFTER THE NET' (June 2011)

In this interview, Graham Harman, philosopher and leading light of the so-called speculative realist movement talks... more In this interview, Graham Harman, philosopher and leading light of the so-called speculative realist movement talks about his work in object-oriented philosophy and the future he envisages for speculative realism.

Review of Lee Braver: A Thing of This World

by Paul Livingston

Continental Philosophy Review 45:1 (2012), pp. 161-70.

Edinburgh Sci & Rel - Presentation - Russell Re Manning - 4 Dec 2011

by Russell Re Manning

Turning to Speculation?

by Filippo Bertoni

Review of: Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman (2011) The
Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne:
re.press, 430 p.

The Notion of Pantry: A Speculative Defense of Unuse

by Davide Panagia

World Journal 6

My title is less odd than it seems. The concerns expressed herein are born from reactions to recent practices of... more My title is less odd than it seems. The concerns expressed herein are born from reactions to recent practices of departmental “de-activation” amongst university campuses (SUNY-Albany, Penn State, & UNLV); from the downsizing of entire faculties in the name of interdisciplinarity due to supposed lack of student interest in classes (a place-holder term for not pulling one’s own weight with regard to student enrolment); and of decisions on the part of governments (both local and federal) to determine the nature of inquiry and, by implication, the nature of intellectual labour (as recent events in Wisconsin and Iowa have shown). The issue, in other words, regards intellectual survival in an age of austerity—and specifically the idea that speculative inquiry is a wrong that must be defended.

Part of what is at stake here is the polemical category of “wrong” itself, and the ease with which we are accustomed to synchronizing the category of wrong with that of the epistemic mistake. I want to propose something different; namely that wrong is a political category, not an epistemological one.1 And as a political category, it disposes spaces and temporalities that interrupt the conventions of correspondence which enable the circulation of value in contemporary political life. As a political category, wrong regards the rendering remarkable of a site of resistance that stands in excess to the prevailing practices of articulation and deliberation.

In contrast, the political economy of austerity (something that has a much more lucrative cultural politics and history than recent debates suggest) relies on the affect of duress in order to assign tort to excess. In universities, the result is not only the inevitable pressure to produce (both publications and Ph.D. students), but the even odder scenario that production must happen under duress: that education must struggle to produce in order to justify its existence against other unproductive expenditures like the health industry or the service industry. Nothing less than the administration of time, and one’s relationship to one’s own time, is what is at stake in the recent attacks on schooling.

Like Two Autistic Moonbeams Piercing the Windows of My Asylum: Chaucer's Griselda and Lars von Trier's Bess McNeill

by Eileen Joy

Published in "New Critical Modes," ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Cary Howie, special issue of "postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies" 2.3 (Fall/Winter 2011): 316-328.

This essay wonders what happens when two texts and one reader happen to each other and open up a singular adventure... more This essay wonders what happens when two texts and one reader happen to each other and open up a singular adventure that is also a moment of ‘futurition’ that opens up new horizons of meaning, both human and inhuman. How can we reckon the weird realism of fictional figures which possess something like the vibrant ‘thing-power’ – a sort of quasi-force to persist in existing – that Jane Bennett argues ‘refuses to dissolve completely into the milieu of human knowledge’?

Paul Reid-Bowen: Vital New Matters: The Speculative Turn in the Study of Religion and Gender

by Religion and Gender (e-journal)

Published in Religion and Gender, vol. 1, no. 1 (2011), 44-65

This article provides an introduction to a new trend in continental philosophy, the turn toward metaphysics, realism... more This article provides an introduction to a new trend in continental philosophy, the turn toward metaphysics, realism and speculative philosophy. This stands in sharp contrast with the antirealist and correlationist traditions that have held sway since Kant’s Copernican Revolution in 1781. It is claimed that the study of religion and gender has been shaped by the antirealist legacy of Kant, but there are good reasons for taking account of the new ‘speculative turn’. Two examples from the leading exponent of this turn, speculative realism, are introduced, and some provisional notes toward applying these to the gender-critical turn in the study of religion are considered. Research notes on the current state of the Goddess movement serve as a test case for the introduction of an object-oriented ontology into religious and gender studies.

All That Goes Unnoticed I Adore: Spencer Reece's Addresses

by Eileen Joy

Essay published in Glossator 5: On The Love of Commentary, ed. Nicola Masciandaro and Scott Wilson (Fall 2011)

This essay ruminates on the form of the apostrophe, in Spencer Reece's twenty "Addresses," [included in his... more This essay ruminates on the form of the apostrophe, in Spencer Reece's twenty "Addresses," [included in his first book of poems, "The Clerk's Tale"], as an enaction of a certain event, or presencing, of a speculative being-with, where both the poet and the objects he addresses, visible or invisible, alive or dead, real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, come together in a vibrantly materialist circuit of vocative speech, which is also a sort of vocal (if also written) commentary upon the text of the world, a counter-signature that, as Derrida might say, exercises a certain faith and leaves marks behind. The essay also considers the poetic address as a form of adoration (literally, ‘reverence’ or ‘worship’) for what has gone missing or been left unattended and unadorned, and which also pulls those lost and left-aside (and unloved) things into the temporal and shining Now of the poet’s address.

Hamlet's Question of Being in a Post-Fordist World of Speculation

by Jason Wakefield

This chapter from my forthcoming Non - Being book is an ontological interrogation of the famous third soliloquy in... more This chapter from my forthcoming Non - Being book is an ontological interrogation of the famous third soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It mediates Meillassoux's speculative realist objections to the manifest stability of our world with Johnston's Humean empiricism. This concludes with how the mediation is situated in a post-Fordist world and how it might evolve in the future.

Some Notes towards a Philosophy of Non-Life

by Tim Morton

Published in Thinking Nature 1.

An essay about the fact that contemporary life sciences make very little distinction between life and non-life; and... more An essay about the fact that contemporary life sciences make very little distinction between life and non-life; and the aesthetic and philosophical ramifications of this fact.

Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, the Strange Stranger, and the Beautiful Soul

by Tim Morton

Published in Collapse 6.

A brief but thorough exploration of the ramifications of Darwin for thinking speculative realism. A brief but thorough exploration of the ramifications of Darwin for thinking speculative realism.

Here Comes Everything: The Promise of Object-Oriented Ontology

by Tim Morton

Published in Qui Parle 19.2

An essay about the significance of object-oriented ontology (OOO), in particular for thinking about ecology. An essay about the significance of object-oriented ontology (OOO), in particular for thinking about ecology.

The Embodied Enthymeme: A Hybrid Theory of Protest

by Joshua Prenosil

Accepted for publication in JAC: Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, Politics

As opposed to the verbal enthymeme of the orator, the logical enthymeme of the analytical philosopher, or the symbolic... more As opposed to the verbal enthymeme of the orator, the logical enthymeme of the analytical philosopher, or the symbolic enthymeme of the social constructionist, the enthymeme developed in this paper is ontological. It defines the possibility of interactivity in social movement while superseding the conventional distinction between object and subject, physis and nomos, things and human access to them. The payoff of such an enthymeme is a strengthened rhetoric that accounts for the persuasiveness of bodily acts where bodies and the networks they inhabit are allowed a material-semiotic agency. It provides a model for a rhetoric that might, in the words of Bruno Latour, “retie the Gordian knot by crisscrossing… the divide that separates exact knowledge and the exercise of power – let us say nature and culture” (“Modern” 3).