The recording of Graham Harman’s talk at University College Dublin (UCD) yesterday, entitled “A New Theory of Substance“, with Dermot Moran as discussant, is available here (1 hr 45 min). Thank you to Peadar Ó Scolaí for sharing the recording with us.
Archive for the ‘Phenomenology’ Category
Recording of Graham Harman in Dublin
18 April 2009A New Theory of Substance
26 March 2009Graham Harman will be speaking at two events at University College Dublin (UCD) in the coming weeks. The first one is a seminar, entitled “A New Theory of Substance” (with Dermot Moran as discussant), which will take place on 17 April 2009. The second one, “Toward an Object-Oriented Philosophy,” is a half-day workshop on 20 April 2009. Please see the CITO (Centre for Innovation, Technology & Organisation) website for further updates regarding the venues and on how to register.
Here is Harman’s abstract for the seminar:
The concept of substance has relatively few defenders in present-day philosophy. I happen to be one of them, though I also believe that several features of the classical concept of substance (simplicity, naturalness, and eternity) must be discarded. For me, the necessity of a new concept of substance (or “objects,” as I prefer) comes from Heidegger’s tool-analysis. With this analysis Heidegger does not just show that invisible human practices come before conscious human awareness. Instead, the analysis shows that objects exist as something over and above all their relations to other things (the exact opposite of Bruno Latour’s relational model of actors). Most contemporary philosophies are simply variant “radical” attempts to deny the existence of objects. Objects are reduced either to their relations, or to how they are manifested in human consciousness, or to tiny material particles, or to “pre-individual singularities,” or to a shapeless, formless rumbling of inarticulate being. I oppose all such radical models, and insist on a “polarized” model of philosophy in which objects can never be reduced to any of their specific incarnations in the world.
On Heidegger’s tool analysis
23 January 2009We have been fortunate here at ANTHEM to be treated a number of times in recent years to Graham Harman’s uncanny ability to abstract and summarise. He has just done it again, this time summarising his own philosophical position on his Object-Oriented Philosophy blog. At the same time in this post Harman also provides a very concise summary of his unorthodox reading of Heidegger’s tool analysis, which first appeared in Tool-Being (2002), and more recently in Heidegger Explained (2008). Harman draws on Whitehead and Leibniz to reinterpret Heidegger’s famous distinction between the ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, which in a number of ways brings him very close to actor-network theory (although some fundamental differences between his position and that of Bruno Latour remain, as he makes it clear). Highly recommended to anyone intrigued by the rift between (Heideggerian) phenomenology and ANT.
The Deleuzian ‘Spatium’ and its ‘Becoming’
23 January 2009An interesting ISRF seminar coming up at ISIG, LSE on 29 January 2009, exploring the connections between Heidegger and Deleuze in relation to technology and organisations:
Information Systems Research Forum
Rethinking Technological Change in Organizations: The Deleuzian ‘Spatium’ and its ‘Becoming’
Eleni Lamprou
ISIG, LSEThursday 29 January 2009
In this presentation, I wish to address the potential contribution of the ontology provided by the French process philosopher Gilles Deleuze to the study of technological change in organizations. In the first part of the presentation, the connections of Deleuze’s work to the work of Martin Heidegger are outlined, as I explore the concept of the ‘spatium’. The ‘spatium’ enfolds Deleuze’s understanding that the physical position of people and technological artefacts within space lends only a partial understanding of the manner in which they actually relate. In the second part, I seek to theorize the manner in which such relationships actually develop through elaborating on Deleuze’s conceptualization of ‘becoming’. Emphasis is placed on what is portrayed by Deleuze as the motor of the ‘becoming’ process, namely, the ‘event’. The ideas presented in this seminar are drawn from the theoretical framework of my doctoral dissertation.
The genealogy of weird realism
7 January 2009Nick over at Speculative Heresy has posted 13 unpublished papers of Graham Harman that span more than a decade, shedding light on the trajectory leading to Harman’s object-orientated philosophy and his forthcoming book on Bruno Latour, The Prince of Networks. ANTHEM readers might be particularly interested in the earlier papers on Heidegger’s equipmentality and the initial assessments of Bruno Latour as a philosopher from 1999. There are also a number of other intriguing contrasts and fusions of philosophers such as Heidegger vs. Whitehead or Leibniz vs. Heidegger. There is even a paper on the resurrection of essence…
Intentional Objects for Non-Humans from Toulouse
21 December 2008Toulouse was hopping this autumn. Hot on the heals of the “Performativity as Politics” conference in October another interesting gathering took place in Toulouse between 17-19 November 2008. It was the Pour une approche non-anthropologique de la subjectivité conference that among others included speakers such as Isabelle Stengers, Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman.
The text of Graham Harman’s talk, “Intentional Objects for Non-Humans,” is available for direct download as a PDF from here (if you want to read the abstract first, click here).
Harman on DeLanda’s ontology: assemblage and realism
12 September 2008Thank you to Nick at Speculative Heresy for alerting us to the online publication of Graham Harman’s article ”DeLanda’s Ontology: Assemblage and Realism” in Continental Philosophy Review. Actually several of us from ANTHEM were at Goldsmiths on 20th April 2007 when Harman delivered the earlier version of this paper, which back then was entitled ”Networks and Assemblages: The Rebirth of Things in Latour and DeLanda.” DeLanda and Latour were already an intriguing juxtaposition, and when the figure of Heidegger and the fourfold emerged, we knew that we were entering interesting territory. At the end of the Goldsmiths session Harman gave one of us the hard copy of his paper, which set off a series of events culminating in The Harman Review in February 2008.
On the Horrors of Realism: An Interview with Graham Harman
7 June 2008
The most recent issue of Pli – The Warwick Journal of Philosophy has an interview with Graham Harman “On the Horrors of Realism.” Harman speaks to Tom Sparrow about object-oriented philosophy, phenomenology, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger’s fourfold, Meillassoux’s correlationism, Lingis, Derrida and Foucault, DeLanda’s realism and Latour’s relationism, speculative realism, Whitehead, Leibniz, Zubiri, H.P. Lovecraft and China Miéville, and of course metaphysics. Harman speaks of weird things, about the horror of the real.
