In celebration of the fact that the transcript of The Harman Review event at the LSE, organised by the ANTHEM Group in February 2008, is now available for pre-order in the UK (and shortly in the USA), under the title, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE, let me post the back cover of the book here, especially as that is the one that is usually not visible in online book shops.
What we’ve all been waiting for: the paperback version of Graham Harman‘s latest book, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, is now available from re.press. This is a great moment for ANTHEM of course, not only because it marks the fruition of a review process that we have been fortunate to be part of (see The Harman Review), but also because this book promises to be a milestone in the debate about the relationship between actor-network theory and phenomenology, and more specifically, between Latour and Heidegger. In Lucas Introna’s words:
Graham Harman’s book Prince of Networks is a wonderfully eloquent exposition of the metaphysical foundations of Latour’s work. This is not an introduction to Latour. It is rather a skilful and penetrating interpretation of his work, as well as a insightful Heideggerian critique. At last somebody has taken Latour to heart and to task. I cannot imagine a more forceful, incisive and lucid analysis of the foundations of Latour’s work than this one.
Thank 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.
Those of you who have read Graham Harman’s manuscript Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics will know that Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of correlationism features prominently in Harman’s assessment of Latour’s philosophy. Meillassoux will be speaking in London on the topic of “Time without Becoming” on 8 May 2008, at 5:30 pm at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. Quentin Meillassoux’s book After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency is now also available in English in Ray Brassier’s translation and with Alain Badiou’s preface from Amazon UK. Further details about the event including directions available here.
Click here to listen to (3 hours 24 minutes) or download (94.4MB) the recording of the symposium “The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics” at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 5 February 2008. Speakers are Bruno Latour and Graham Harman. The panelists are Lucas Introna and Noortje Marres. The event is introduced by Leslie Willcocks and chaired by Edgar Whitley. There are also audience questions and comments. This event was organised by members of the ANTHEM Group and hosted by the Information Systems and Innovation Group (ISIG) of the Department of Management, LSE.
