What is Speculative Realism_ - Zero Books Blog

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What is Speculative Realism?

Nov 12th, 2012 | By Zero Books Editor | Category: Articles, Uncategorized

Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary philosophy which defines itself loosely in its stance

of metaphysical realism against the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy or what it terms correlationism.

Speculative realism is believed to have taken it’s name from a conference held at Goldsmiths College, University of

London in April, 2007. The conference was moderated by Alberto Toscano of Goldsmiths College, and featuredpresentations by Ray Brassier of American University of Beirut (then at Middlesex University), Iain Hamilton Grant ofthe University of the West of England, Graham Harman of the American University in Cairo, and Quentin

Meillassoux of the École normale supérieure in Paris. Credit for the name “speculative realism” is generally ascribed toBrassier, though Meillassoux had already used the term “speculative materialism” to describe his own position.

While often in disagreement over basic philosophical issues, the speculative realist thinkers have a shared resistanceto philosophies of human finitude inspired by the tradition of Immanuel Kant.

What unites the four core members of the movement is an attempt to overcome both “correlationism”as well as“philosophies of access.” In After Finitude, Meillassoux defines correlationism as “the idea according to which we onlyever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from theother.” Philosophies of access are any of those philosophies which privilege the human being over other entities. Bothideas represent forms of anthropocentrism.

All four of the core thinkers within Speculative Realism work to overturn these forms of philosophy which privilege thehuman being, favouring distinct forms of realism against the dominant forms of idealism in much of contemporaryphilosophy. (1. Wikipedia)

These days, Speculative Realism is a well-known phrase with especial appeal to the younger generation in continentalphilosophy. The essays and lectures found here tell my own part of the story as a champion of the “object-oriented” wingof the movement. Rather than a unified school, Speculative Realism has always been a loose umbrella term for fourmarkedly different positions: my own objectoriented philosophy, Ray Brassier’s eliminative nihilism, Iain HamiltonGrant’s cyber-vitalism, and Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative materialism. (2. Towards Speculative Realism: Essays

and Lectures, Graham Harman, ISBN: 978-1-84694-394-2, Zero Books)

Speculative realism has certainly revivified philosophy, inspiring a fervour of concept-production far beyond the traditional(but now largely moribund) academic spaces with which philosophy is usually associated: in the para-academicjournal Collapse , for example, as well as in an efflorescence of blogs such as Speculative Heresy, AccursedShare , Planomenology and Naught Thought.

The original Goldsmiths event brought together four philosophers – Harman, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant and QuentinMeillassoux – who were united by an antipathy towards the dominant consensus in continental philosophy. It was thepublication of Meillassoux’s After Finitude (2006; translated by Brassier into an English edition published by Continuum in2008) that gave the four philosophers’ common enemy a name: ‘correlationism’, the view that thought cannot have access tothings-in-themselves, only to things as they appear for us. (3. http://blog.frieze.com/speculative_realism/ by Mark Fisherauthor of Capitalist Realism, ISBN: 978-1-84694-317-1, Zero Books)

Object-oriented ontology is often viewed as a subset of speculative realism, a contemporary school of thought that

criticizes the post-Kantian reduction of philosophical enquiry to a correlation between thought and being, such that thereality of anything outside of this correlation is unknowable. Object-oriented ontology predates speculative realism,however, and makes distinct claims about the nature and equality of object relations to which not all speculative realistsagree. The term “object-oriented philosophy” was officially coined by Graham Harman, the movement’s founder, in his1999 doctoral dissertation “Tool-Being: Elements in a Theory of Objects.” Since then, a number of theorists working in avariety of disciplines have adapted Harman’s ideas, including philosophy professor Levi Bryant, literature and ecologyscholar Timothy Morton, video game designer Ian Bogost, and medievalists Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Eileen Joy. In2009, Bryant rephrased Harman’s original designation as “object-oriented ontology,” giving the movement its currentname.

In his book, Post Continental Voices, author Paul J Ennis interviews a number of these thinkers and asks about their

academic development, their hopes for post-Continental philosophy, and whether they can provide some advice foraspiring academic philosophers.

http://zero-books.net/blogs/zero/author/maria/

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_realism

http://www.continental-philosophy.org/2007/03/29/speculative-realism/

http://www.zero-books.net/authors/graham-harman&i=9

http://www.amazon.com/Towards-Speculative-Realism-Essays-Lectures/dp/1846943949/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352538646&sr=1-1&keywords=toward+speculative+realism

http://blog.frieze.com/speculative_realism/

http://www.urbanomic.com/

http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/

http://accursedshare.blogspot.com/

http://planomenology.wordpress.com/

http://naughtthought.wordpress.com/

http://blog.frieze.com/speculative_realism/

http://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-there-alternative-Books/dp/1846943175/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352539629&sr=1-1&keywords=capitalist+realism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

http://www.amazon.com/Post-Continental-Voices-Interviews-Paul-Ennis/dp/184694385X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352541437&sr=8-1&keywords=post+continental+voices

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They have been picked for their achievements, popularity and potential but I’ve also tried to choose people known for theirkindness in helping out a graduate student or two. This collection of interviews can be read as an advice handbook or anintroduction to post- Continental philosophy. Either way the point is to provide the reader with a small push on the windingstairs up to the ivory tower. The seven thinkers involved are a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. There are establishednames but also a couple of surprises.

Interviews are with; Graham Harman, Jeffrey Malpas, Stuart Elden, Ian Bogost, Levi Bryant, Adrian Ivakhiv and LeeBraver.

In Continental Realism Paul Ennis tackles the rise of realist metaphysics in contemporary continental philosophy.

Pitted against the dominant antirealist and transcendental continental hegemony Ennis argues that continental thinkingmust establish an alliance between metaphysics, speculation, and realism if we are to truly get back to the thingsthemselves.

Paul J. Ennis has given us the first general overview of the theses of After Finitude, and of their reception in the Anglo-American philosophical field. The theses in question – speculative and correlationist – are here exposed with clarityand fidelity. An indispensable introduction to speculative realism. Quentin Meillassoux, Le Département de

philosophie, École normale supérieure

In its brief compass Ennis’s book gives a lively, sympathetic though critical account of a newly emergent movement ofthought – speculative realism – that looks set to transform received ideas of what counts as “continental” philosophy.Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy, School of English, Communication and

Philosophy, Cardiff University.

Speculative Realism is notable for its fast expansion via the Internet in the form of blogs. Web sites have formed asresources for essays, lectures, and planned future books by those within the Speculative Realist movement. Many otherblogs have emerged with original material on Speculative realism or expanding on its themes and ideas, and podcastsfeaturing various speculative realists have also appeared online.

Publishers such as Zero Books, Re.Press, punctum books, and Open Humanities Press have contributed to this

growth as well, publishing PDFs of books and signing contracts with bloggers to produce literature pertaining tospeculative realism. This represents a general trend within speculative realism; a willingness to abandon traditionalmethods of publication/communication in favour of innovation.

Zero Books has published a number of books by Graham Harman.

Tags: Alberto Toscano, Capitalist Realism, correlationism, Goldsmiths College, Graham Harman, Iain

Hamilton Grant, Immanuel Kant, Mark Fisher, Object-oriented philosophy, Paul J Ennis, philosophy, Post

Continental, post-Kantian philosophy, Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, speculative materialism,

Speculative Realism, Zero Books

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