What is Speculative Realism?

Over at Object Oriented Philosophy Harman talks a little bit about speculative realism riffing off the blurbs for Continental Realism. Like Harman I also think that despite the wide net that speculative realism casts it is by no means beyond definition – after all continental philosophy casts a much wider net and yet we still manage to recognize what it signals (consider how different Deleuze and Heidegger are and how we still consider them both continentals). I talk about this a little in the orphaned article that I posted up as ‘The Speculative Terrain’ and there I emphasize that what we have here is a community.

I don’t think that any community is necessarily bound to the opinions of its founders and so the distance that Ray Brassier has established between himself and the label is not enough to dispel the fact that some kind of speculative realism has spilled beyond its original remit (become something in its own right). And even then when it boils down to it the basis remains, as Harman notes, broadly the same : opposition to correlationism, realist in orientation, a little weird, a little bit speculative (sometimes very much so), and so on.

This is where I was going with post-continental philosophy: philosophies rooted in continental philosophy, but not beholden to it (what I would call progress). In the editorial to Speculations II the team will also attempt to synthesize some of the recent developments we’ve seen in the past year or so and, of course, what else is Speculations if not a home for a wild mesh of speculative realists, post-continental philosophers, and theorists of/on the fringe? You can call it a movement or a community or whatever else you want, but it exists – that much is crystal clear.

As for Continental Realism I admit I have been somewhat silent on the argument but on reflection the book is an ode (of sorts) to speculative thinkers charting my own liberation from antirealism, traditional continentalism, and what I like to now call the fog... I do think the final point will be slightly unusual and hopefully raise some eyebrows, but leaving the argument aside it will, as the blurbs point out, be a kind of sprint through as many ideas from as many speculative realists as I could squash into as few pages as possible (it comes in at less than 100 pages). Here is the table of contents which should give an idea about what to expect:

Preface: The Hermeneutics of the Real

1.1. The Ancestral Realm

1.2. The Correlationist Nexus
a. The Transcendentalist Response I: Husserl, Perception, and Adumbrations
b. The Transcendentalist Response II: Kant, Transcendental Subjectivity and Embodiment

1.3. The Thought of the ‘In-Itself’
a. Intellectual Intuition
b. The Transcendentalist Response III: Hägglund, Gabriel, and Žižek
c. The Speculative Response: Gratton and Harman

1.4. Thinking le grand dehors
a. ‘Nature’ and the Out-side
b. Wohin haben wir uns verirrt?

1.5. Hegel without Hope

Dermot Moran Interview

Via Graham, an interview with Dermot Moran from my own department at University College, Dublin. Moran is a walking phenomenology encyclopedia. This interview gives some nice insight into how things have changed in academia over the years. I'm not sure which martial art he is an expert in, but he is indeed a martial arts expert.

Writing Again

I just spent the last few hours mocking up some material I had from my thesis for an article that I am writing for Continent (provisional title: Ptolemaic metaphysics and the ruins of being). Alongside an article on Dunkelheit promised for Helvete I finally found the courage to open up the thesis in order to extract material. I haven't looked at it since submission, but enough time has passed that I felt able to chop out potential articles without getting too bogged down in it.

So far it looks like I should be able to get three more articles from the thesis: a Hegel one (maybe two since I have about 10,000 words on Hegel), another Heidegger one and one based on material I have on Deleuze, Badiou and Meillassoux. I am not sure when I'll get around to them, but it is nice to have material in advance just in case. There are a few journals I quite like that would be great to submit to, but the entire process is time-consuming and so I'll wait and see how things plan out in the next few months before tackling all that.

Continent CFP

The CFP for continent issue 2 has just gone up. The first issue was really innovative and worth checking out. For the second issue I'm writing an article on 'Ptolemaic metaphysics amidst the ruins of being' (provisional title but you get the drift).

Speculations Volume II Table of Contents

This is a provisional table of contents for the upcoming issue of Speculations. Things are moving along fast so we should have it rolled out pretty quickly once the design phase kicks in. There are no less than 9 articles, 2 position papers, an interview, and 3 book reviews. Contributors range from Badiou scholars, object oriented ontologists, and at least one theoretical physicist. I think it is a strong issue and will help set some new debates in motion.

Speculations Volume II

Articles

Tractatus Mathematico-Politicus - Christopher Norris

The Philosopher, the Sophist, the Undercurrent and Alain Badiou - Marianna Papastefanou

On the Reality and Construction of Hyperobjects with reference to Class - Levi Bryant

Structure, Sense, and Territory – Michael Austin

The Anxiousness of Objects - Robert Jackson

The Cubist Object - Hilan Bensusan

On the possibility of ignorance in Meillassoux - Josef Moshe

Sublime Objects – Tim Morton

Unknowing Animals - Nicola Masciandaro


Positions Papers and Interview

Networkologies II – Christopher Vitale

‘Girls Welcome!!!’ – Michael O’Rourke

‘Science and Philosophy’ Interview with Sean Carroll – Fabio Gironi


Book Reviews

Review of Eugene Thacker’s After Life – Anthony Paul Smith

Review of Jussi Parikka’s Insect Media – Beatrice Marovich

Review of Graham Harman’s Towards Speculative Realism – Fintan Neylan

Helvete: Journal of Black Metal Theory

This looks like a great addition to the expanding world of open access journals that is developing these days. I'll be writing a piece on Burzum's Dunkelheit. The journal has been put together by Zachary Price, Aspasia Stephanou, and Ben Woodard.