Archive for the ‘Graham Harman’ Category
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.
Tags:Katherine Gillieson, Levi R. Bryant, Open Humanities Press, Tammy Lu, The Democracy of Objects
Posted in Books, Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Object-oriented philosophy, speculative realism | 1 Comment »
1 September 2011
At The Chronicle of Higher Education:
I am not trying to claim that everyone should be interested in the niceties of the debate that has unfolded (although, if they are, the writings of Graham Harman or Isabelle Stengers are a good place to start, as are collections like Bryant, Srnicek, and Harmans’s The Speculative Turn). Rather, I want to use it as an example of a recent development in how academe communicates with itself. For one thing that I have found really interesting about the turn to speculative realism is that is has clearly been fuelled by online communities which have turned above all to blogs as an important means of swapping material, revealing first thoughts, and making revisions. I doubt that the growth of speculative realism would have been so insistent without these communities scattered all over the world, or so rapid.
Tags:Nigel Thrift
Posted in Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, speculative realism | 1 Comment »
15 July 2011
Graham Harman’s new book, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making, is now available on The Book Depository website. My experience with The Book Depository suggests that this is probably a limited amount of copies, and once they sell out they’ll go back to pre-order. The Book Depository (recently bought by Amazon) ships free worldwide.
Update: Well, I see it had already sold out within a couple of hours. So that was that… Oh, wait. The hardback is still there.
Quentin Meillassoux has been described as the most rapidly prominent French philosopher in the Anglophone world since Jacques Derrida in the 1960′s. With the publication of After Finitude (2006), this daring protege of Alain Badiou became one of the world’s most visible younger thinkers. In this book, his fellow Speculative Realist, Graham Harman, assesses Meillassoux’s publications in English so far. Also included are an insightful interview with Meillassoux and first-time translations of excerpts from L’Inexistence divine (The Divine Inexistence), his famous but still unpublished major book.
Quentin Meillassoux’s entry into the philosophical scene marks the beginning of a new epoch: the end of the transcendental approach and the return to realist ontology. Harman’s beautifully written and argued book provides not just an introduction to Meillassoux, but much more: one authentic philosopher writing about another – a rare true encounter. It is not only for those who want to understand Meillassoux, but also for those who want to witness a radical shift in the entire field of philosophy. It is a book that will shake the very foundations of your world!
Slavoj Žižek
P.S. The Quadruple Object is also back on the menu (including an EPUB-DRM eBook version).
Tags:Quentin Meillassoux
Posted in Graham Harman, Object-oriented philosophy, philosophy, speculative realism | 1 Comment »
9 July 2011
Kindle editions of The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE are now also available on Amazon US and Amazon UK. Somewhat counter-intuitively though the electronic edition is only available for pre-order and according to Amazon it will only be released on the official publication date (29 July 2011), while they’ve been happily selling the paperback version for the last 10 days. In fact Amazon US now seems to have run out of the paperback, although it’s still available on Amazon UK. An alternative source for US customers is The Book Depository, which not only has free shipping to the US but (rather controversially) has just been bought by Amazon last week.
Tags:Amazon, The Book Depository, The Prince and the Wolf
Posted in Actor-network-theory, Books, Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Object-oriented philosophy, philosophy, Social theory, speculative realism | Leave a Comment »
2 July 2011
It 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
Posted in Books, Graham Harman, Object-oriented philosophy, speculative realism | Leave a Comment »
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.
