I heard it through the grapevine that there will be a seminar series discussing The Prince and the Wolf at at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin. More details at the Art in the Contemporary World blog and A Little Tag End of the World blog, where apparently some of the discussion will be posted.
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Seminar series on The Prince and the Wolf
21 October 2011The Democracy of Objects by Levi Bryant
14 September 2011
The latest addition to object-oriented ontology: Levi Bryant of Larval Subjects fame publishes the HTML version of his new book, The Democracy of Objects. PDF and paper version to follow. This is the first book in the New Metaphysics series edited by Graham Harman and Bruno Latour at Open Humanities Press. Cover design by Katherine Gillieson, illustration by Tammy Lu.
Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. Drawing on the work of the systems theorists and cyberneticians, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he is able to integrate the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects.
Whitehead in Latour
15 August 2011In what is probably the first review of The Prince and the Wolf, Steven Shaviro discusses the interpretation of Whitehead by both Latour and Harman. Here is Harman’s response.
The Prince and the Wolf on iTunes
30 July 2011
The Prince and the Wolf is now available on iTunes (only in the USA for now), if you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.
Circling the Quadruple Object
27 July 2011Christopher Kullenberg’s ANT-ish reading of Harman’s The Quadruple Object.
The Quadruple Object available in the UK and elsewhere
4 July 2011Graham Harman’s The Quadruple Object is now also available in the UK and a range of other countries worldwide from The Book Depository.
Update [22:00, 4-Jul-11]: I noticed that The Quadruple Object flickers in an out of existence during the day on The Book Depository website. For a few hours it was on sale today, then it went back to pre-order. So it’s worth checking again, if it’s not available in the first instance.
The Quadruple Object available in the US
2 July 2011It seems that Graham Harman‘s The Quadruple Object has been released early by Amazon USA (but I couldn’t find it in the UK yet, despite the fact that it’s been published by a British publisher). There were 14 copies available when I last checked. I wonder why Amazon displays stock levels in some cases, but not in others. Perhaps they don’t display it until the stock level dips below a certain level? In any case, no stocks level displayed for The Prince and the Wolf, which is now also available on Amazon USA.
In this book the metaphysical system of Graham Harman is presented in lucid form, aided by helpful diagrams. In Chapter 1, Harman gives his most forceful critique to date of philosophies that reject objects as a primary reality. All such rejections are tainted by either an undermining or overmining approach to objects. In Chapters 2 and 3, he reviews his concepts of sensual and real objects. In the process, he attacks the prestige normally granted to philosophies of human access, which Harman links for the first time to the already discredited Meno’s Paradox. In Chapters 4 through 7, Harman brings the reader up to speed on his interpretation of Heidegger, which culminates in a fourfold structure of objects linked by indirect causation. In Chapter 8, he speculates on the implications of this theory for the debate over panpsychism, which Harman both embraces and rejects. In Chapters 9 and 10, he introduces the term ontography as the study of the different possible permutations of objects and qualities, which he simplifies with easily remembered terminology drawn from standard playing cards.
In this book we again encounter Harman’s voice and the extraordinary force of his theses. Starting from an initial simplicity, they ultimately attain a degree of complexity and fascinating depth— but always step by step, in such a way that the reader is never distracted.
Quentin Meillassoux, École normale supérieure
Harman’s style often evokes that of a William James merged with the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft.
Olivier Surel, Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne
The Prince and the Wolf released
30 June 2011The transcript of the 5 February 2008 debate between Bruno Latour and Graham Harman at the LSE has now been released in book form in the UK and some other European countries, under the title: The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE. Here is the Amazon UK link, but overseas readers might also be interested in the free worldwide delivery service of The Book Depository. There are also some retailers on eBay that might be willing to ship further afield. The book has been published by Zero Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd.
Update [2-Jul-11]: I see Amazon UK have underestimated the demand for this book (tsk, tsk!) and now they’ve sold out and are back to pre-ordering. So here are a few other UK retailers, besides the aforementioned ones: WH Smith, Blackwell’s, and Tesco. If you’re based overseas, one good way to find a retailer might be to use the “Shopping” comparison feature in the main Google page of your country (if there is one). But chances are that retailers in other countries at this point are still getting their copies shipped from a UK wholesaler, in which case The Book Depository or eBay might still be quicker.
The book can be previewed at Google Books and Amazon.
Update no. 2: Prompted by Graham’s blog post I just checked and saw that Amazon USA has started selling it as well.
Update [9-Jul-11] There are now also Kindle editions on Amazon USA and Amazon UK.
Update [15-Jul-11] There is now also an EPUB-DRM eBook version.
The Prince and the Wolf contains the transcript of a debate which took place on 5th February 2008 at the London School of Economics (LSE) between the prominent French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour and the Cairo-based American philosopher Graham Harman. The occasion for the debate was the impending publication of Harman’s book, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. During the discussion, Latour (the ‘Prince’) compared the professional philosophers who have pursued him over the years to a pack of wolves. The Prince and the Wolf is the story of what happens when the wolf catches up with the prince. Latour and Harman engage in brisk and witty conversation about questions that go to the heart of both metaphysics and research methodology: What are objects? How do they interact? And best how to study them?
Too often debates are sterile. Each participant lines up behind the other, each with their own point of view. All is on show but nothing much happens. This debate is different. Something happened.
Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick
This is an especially welcome book. It is rare that one has the opportunity to be a near eye witness to a constructive and intellectually generous exchange of provocative ideas-in-the-making. Graham Harman, Bruno Latour and the assembled audience put on a great show. The exchange is fresh, laced with good humor, and informative. There is much to be learned here about empirical metaphysics—and collegiality.
Michael Flower, Portland State University
Many crucial things get exposed and made explicit here. A key access point to the Latourian moment.
Fabian Muniesa, École des Mines de Paris
