New Materialism and Anti-Racism

In a recent facebook thread, there was a discussion about speculative realism and new materialism (and allied groups) relationship to feminism, queer theory, and anti-racist philosophy. In that thread, I pointed out some of the obvious new materialist thinkers working on feminist and/or queer theory fields. What I want to do here is collect the works where thinkers use new materialist insights to think through anti-racism. This list will be incomplete, and I welcome anyone who wants to add to the bibliography (I will edit this post as necessary). Also, by new materialists I am using the term in the broadest sense. I mean here thinkers who are broadly engaged in new materialism, speculative realism, non-representational theory, constructivist philosophy, posthumanism, and generally all the headings that can be thought under the metaphysical/ontological/non-human turn. I have also decided to write some very quick summaries of each text. The summaries are not super great, but should give you a sense of how the text deals with race and new materialism.


Mel Chen: Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Chen explores the ways that we navigate what we consider to be animate, to be living or dead. In so doing she particularly explores the ways that certain material objects come to be racialized, and she explores the ways other beings become de-racialized and neutered.

Michael Hames-García, "How Real is Race?," which can be found either in his book, Identity Complex, or in the edited volume Material Feminisms. In this essay Hames-García engages Barad's work on intra-action in order to think about the ontological realities (and limits) of race.

Donna Jones: The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity. Jones explores how vitalist discourses, including in Nietzsche and Bergson, were implicated in racism and anti-Semitism. She also explores the way that vitalism continues in thinkers like Deleuze and Grosz. Furthermore, Jones explores the way that Négritude cannot be fully understood outside of the vitalist tradition.

Fred Moten: In The Break: The Aesthetics Of The Black Radical Tradition, and his essay, "The Case of Blackness." I talk briefly about these texts in this post. Moten work, principally aesthetic, speaks of an "animative materiality."

Jasbir Puar: Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, and also her essay, "'I'd Rather Be a Cyborg Than a Goddess: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory." In both, Puar uses assemblage theory to try to challenge and extend the concept of intersectionality.

Arun Saldanha: "Reontologising race: the machinic geography of phenotype." Saldanha is interested in understanding race as a material ontology, and as a machinic assemblage.


Okay, what obvious things did I miss? What non-obvious things did I miss, and also need to make sure I read?

EDIT:

I thought about trying determine what counted as new materialist/ontological turn/etc., and if it really dealt with anti-racism. But I decided it was outside of my scope. I will just post the lists suggested from commentators. When lots of suggestions occur for an author, I randomly just chose one, read the comments for more. A lot of these are great suggestions. Also, I highly suggest reading the comments, there are lots of great stuff in there.

Anonymous:
Simone Bignall: Postcolonial Agency: Critique and Constructivism;
Bignall and Patton (Eds.): Deleuze and the Postcolonial
Tony Bennett: Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism
Helen Verran: "A Postcolonial Moment in Science Studies: Alternative Firing Regimes of Environmental Scientists and Aboriginal Landowners."
Mario Blaser: "Ontology and indigeneity: on the political ontology of heterogeneous assemblages."
Marisol de la Cadena: "Indigenous Cosmopilitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond 'Politics'"
John Law: After Method: Mess in Social Science Research
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: The Inconstancy of the Indian Soul

Carlos Amador:
Arun Saldanha and Jason Adams (Eds): Deleuze and Race.
Michael Taussig: Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing 

Jairus Victor Grove:
Glissant Poetics of Relation
Castro, The Enemy's Point of View
Muecke, Ancient and Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy
João Biehl: Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment
Danny Hoffman's The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Sergio González Rodríguez: The Femicide Machine
Octavia Butler: Bloodchild


CC:
Kalpana Rahita Seshadri: HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language.

Speculative Realism vs. New Materialism, a question

Following up on a discussion I was having about the new books forthcoming on speculative realism, I have a question for everyone. Yeah, yeah, you don't come to my blog for homework, I get it. But this is quick. Make a list of thinkers (no longer than 10) that you associate with speculative realism. Now, make a list of thinkers (no longer than 10) that you associate with new materialism. These lists cannot overlap (you can't put the same thinker in both list, you have the choice, no matter how arbitrary that choice that is). Feel free to post answers in comments (it is open, and anonymous comments are welcome), feel free to email me, or post it to my facebook.

EDIT: You can just make the lists, don't worry about providing justifications. You can, if you want. But I am much more interested in your first impression lists.

Books forthcoming on Speculative Realism

While we are frequently reminded that speculative realism doesn't, on some level, exist, it certainly hasn't stopped there being a out pouring of speculative realism books. And several of these look very exciting.

There is Tristan Garcia's recently translated and massive tome, Form and Object: A Treatise on Things.

Furthermore there are three books coming out very closely together, that all attempt to engage systematically with speculative realism, while also advancing their own argument.

Coming out in late July from Edinburgh University Press, there is Tom Sparrow's The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism.

There is Peter Gratton's Speculative Realism: Problems and Prospects, due out in September from Bloomsbury Academic. You can read the actually pretty funny intro to his book here.

And lastly, but probably not least, there is Steven Shaviro's The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism, which is due out in October from the University of Minnesota Press.


And the thing is, regardless on your position of speculative realism, all the books listed are probably going to be worth your time. None of the books, based on the bits and parts I have read or have talked about with the author, are some sort of fawning engagement with speculative realism. At the same time, all of them treat the this strand of thinking as serious, interesting, and, well, actually existing.

More on Realism and Pluralism

I will probably have more to say, meanwhile, the discussion continues, and you should probably read up on it.

Circling Squares One, Larval Subjects One, Struggle Forever, Circling Squares Two, After Nature, and Larval Subjects Two.

That is a lot going on, again, hopefully, I will have more to contribute later.

EDIT: Also check out Agent Swarm and Footnotes 2 Plato.

Pluralism and Realism: a Jamesian rejoinder

Following up on a short, but interesting post by Jeremy Trombley, Levi Bryant bring up his hesitancy at the ontologically rich work in anthropology. Anyone who has read the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo Kohn, Philippe Descola, and Tim Ingold know that there is a strain within anthropology that is (and has been for quite some time) producing ontologically and metaphysically rich accounts of the world that refuses any easy anthropocentrism (and I am not an anthropologist, so forgive me if that list is particularly partial or idiosyncratic). The hesistancy of Levi comes from the tension he perceives between realism and pluralism. As he explains:

I want to be pluralist and recognize that different groups of people have/propose different ontologies or different “theories of the world”.  I think it’s deeply important to recognize this for a variety of reasons.  However, as a realist and advocate of some version of the Enlightenment, I can’t, of course, believe that all of these ontologies are true depictions of being.  I can appreciate the ethical and political commitments of my good friend, a liberal catholic Bishop (unaffiliated with Rome); however, I can’t share his views that God exists, that we have souls (or are anything more than some form of embodiment), that there’s an efficacy to pray beyond psychological benefits it might have, etc.  The universe that I think is real and that can be argued for is just not a universe that contains these things. 

Also, I appreciate how, a little later in the post, Levi makes sure to include animals as part of the pluralism we need. True enough.
Of course there is a philosopher for whom answering this question might be, as Kennan Ferguson has suggested, his most important legacy. Obviously, I mean William James.
James strived to think the meaning of truth alongside his understanding of a pluriverse or multiverse (he might have been the one to coin multiverse). For Jamesian pragmatism, we all know the formula for understanding what is true. "Grant an idea or belief to be true...what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? ... True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify" (Pragmatism, p. 97). He goes on: "This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation."(p. 97) Pragmatism does not give us access to realism (or at least the realism that Levi seems to mean), because it is fundamentally uninterested in such questions as a priori questions. Does this mean that pragmatism is open to charges of correlationism? Different language, but a common and old attack on pragmatism. James again (long quotation, sorry):

What our critics most persistently keep saying is that though workings go with truth, yet they do not constitute it. It is numerically additional to them, prior to them, explanatory of them, and in no wise to be explained by them, we are incessantly told. The first point for our enemies to establish, therefore, is that something numerically additional and prior to the workings is involved in the truth of an idea. Since the object is additional, and usually prior, most rationalists plead it, and boldly accuse us of denying it. This leaves on the bystanders the impression -- since we cannot reasonably deny the existence of the object -- that our account of truth breaks down, and that our critics have driven us from the field. Altho in various places in this volume I try to refute the slanderous charge that we deny real existence, I will say here again, for the sake of emphasis, that the existence of the object, whenever the idea asserts it ' truly,' is the only reason, in innumerable cases, why the idea does work successfully, if it work at all; and that it seems an abuse of language, to say the least, to transfer the word 'truth-' from the idea to the object's existence, when the falsehood of ideas that won't work is explained by that existence as well as the truth of those that will.
I find this abuse prevailing among my most accomplished adversaries. But once establish the proper verbal custom, let the word ' truth' represent a property of the idea, cease to make it something mysteriously connected with the object known, and the path opens fair and wide, as I believe, to the discussion of radical empiricism on its merits. The truth of an idea will then mean only its workings, or that in it which by ordinary psychological laws sets up those workings; it will mean neither the idea's object, nor anything 'saltatory' inside the idea, that terms drawn from experience cannot describe. (p. 174)

The question of truth is not, then, if that object exists really. The cat sitting in my lap, refusing to move as I type with my laptop resting against him, is utterly real (other philosophers use desks and coffee mugs in their discussions. For me, the object par excellence is always the cat, always trying to interfere with my working). Truth describes the relation between knower and known, between idea and object. Therefore, not all real things are equally true. Again, James:

It is quite evident that our obligation to acknowledge truth, so far from being unconditional, is tremendously conditioned. Truth with a big T, and in the singular, claims abstractly to be recognized, of course; but concrete truths in the plural need be recognized only when their recognition is expedient. A truth must always be preferred to a falsehood when both relate to the situation; but when neither does, truth is as little of a duty as falsehood. If you ask me what o'clock it is and I tell you that I live at 95 Irving Street, my answer may indeed be true, but you don't see why it is my duty to give it. A false address would be as much to the purpose.
With this admission that there are conditions that limit the application of the abstract imperative, the pragmatistic treatment of truth sweeps back upon us in its fulness. Our duty to agree with reality is seen to be grounded in a perfect jungle of concrete expediencies. (p. 111)

Perhaps, then, we are not talking of speculative realism, but rather what Brian Massumi has called speculative pragmatism. Or just the plain old adventures in radical empiricism.
What pragmatism does, however, is entirely devalue the project of first philosophy. If truth, pragmatically speaking, is unconcerned with questions of ultimate reality. Thinking proceeds without ground (perhaps, as Schelling put it, Ungrund. Perhaps not). And therefore truth, as relation, does not privilege the grounding of metaphysics, or ethics, or epistemology, or logic, or the political, or aesthetics, or what have you. Rather, thinking proceeds ungrounded among the constant pullings and tensions of a pluralistic world of second philosophies. Perhaps even of the non-philosophical, as Laruelle has put it (see APS' book, chapter five). Thinking in pragmatism takes on the character of ecology.
"The world is full of partial stories that run parallel to one another, beginning and ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere at points, but we cannot unify them completely in our minds. In following your life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from my own. Even a biographer of twins would have to press them alternately upon his reader's attention." (p. 71). The truth of pragmatism does not just allow pluralism, but in many ways must take the side of pluralism. And the tension will not end up not just between realism and pluralism, but also between monism and pluralism (and thus to some degree between Spinoza and James. Steven Shaviro manages to capture this tension in a few sentences and footnotes of chapter two of Without Criteria).
Empricism, as James understands it, begins with understanding the parts and working to the whole. Rationalism begins with the whole, and works to the parts. Kennan Ferguson follows James' arguments, explaining that "James censured 'our' (philosophers' and others') tendency to fall into what he called 'idealistic monism': that is, to hierarchize entirety over partiality, to think of the whole as the natural, highest conception" (Ferguson, William James, pp. 2-3. Btw, if you are concerned at all with this issue, you absolutely must read Kennan's book. You.Must.Do.It). Pragmatism, in this way, is deeply discomforting. No ground to think from, and a pluralistic world that necessarily means partial stories, unfinished questions, threads of work lost and, perhaps, never found. Oh, but the joy as well. The ability to shrug off certain annoying debates with, "Well, I'm basically a pragmatist," and then move on with your work.

EDIT: Also read this post at Circling Squares.

OOO/SR

I am going to talk about a weird little conceptual pet peeve I have been having. There is a tendency to write and talk about something called, strangely now, OOO/SR, which obviously stands for Object-Oriented Ontology and Speculative Realism. Which is odd, if you think about it, because those terms are not synonyms. Historically, Speculative Realism referred to a group of four thinkers, of which Graham Harman's Object-Oriented Philosophy was one strand. So, whenever someone talks about OOO/SR, it is the same as if they were writing deconstruction/poststructuralism. Poststructuralism is obviously something much larger than deconstruction (and it would include several people who rejected or had issues with the term poststructuralism, just as speculative realism includes people like Ray Brassier, who has rejected the term). So, the phrase OOO/SR is really odd. More importantly, it often gets used in strange, univocal ways. In other words, it is often used to talk about the field as a whole, like "OOO/SR doesn't..." or "What OOO/SR allows us to do...", which is all very strange. We are talking about a lot of thinkers, many of whom disagree with each other to various degrees. Again, it is somewhat analogous to people writing "what deconstruction/poststructuralism doesn't do...".  (Btw, I am tempted to always write, after I say object-oriented ontology, if such a thing exists! like Derrida always did with deconstruction)

There exists a conceptual murkiness here I don't really understand. If you want to talk about object-oriented ontology, talk about OOO. If you want to talk about speculative materialism, talk about speculative materialism. If you want to talk about correlationism, talk about correlationism. If you want to talk about speculative realism as a poorly suited grab bag term for a cluster of thinkers working on projects both very dissimilar but also very close, do that (in this sense, speculative realism is a lot like poststructuralism. An evocative term for grouping, heuristically useful, but not really conceptually specific). But please, spare me the weirdness of  the extended and confusing acronym that is "OOO/SR".

Marx, Machines, New Materialisms

Tim Morton has a recent post on marxism and new materialism (that jives well with Levi's post on OOO and humanism).

Tim's post, like many of his, is a concentrated bundle of ideas and connections. In this case, I both deeply agree with parts of it, and also disagree with others.

(1) Marx on machines is pretty essential for those trying to think through non-humanist understanding of relations. Switches from one mode of production to another mode of production comes not through some sort of economism, but rather as a way in which material processes are both shaped and simultaneously shaped by humans. In other words, humans are one part in the creation of history (in Marx a particularly privileged part still, but maybe not a necessarily privileged part), but so are tools, technology, machines, and the inorganic body of nature (sometimes in Marx's writing the natural world seems passive and inert, a mere resource to be used by humans. At other times nature is depicted as a fully engaged process and producer itself, one which is fully enmeshed with the artificial world. In other words, in some nature exists, in others we have a view of ecology).

(2) This is why Marx claims, in a footnote in Capital, that "Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature, the direct process of the production of his life, and thereby it also lays bare the process of the production of the social relations of his life, and the mental conceptions that flow from those relations". This is one my agreements with Tim, who writes:

Marx says that when you have enough machines, in particular machines operated by other machines and making machines, you get a jump from a quantitative increase in machinery into the realm of the qualitative, into fully fledged industrial capitalism. Some kind of jump occurs.

Yes, and all of that is important. This new type of capitalism emerges because we have a new mode of production. Not just a production of economics and things, but an entirely new mode or relation, a new mode of life and the reproduction of life in the full ecological understanding of all of that. This is why it is important to grasp a history of these machines. Or at Marx clarifies earlier in the footnote I cited: "A critical history of technology would show how little of the inventions of the eighteenth century are the world of a single individual. As yet such a book does not exist. Darwin has directed attention to the history of natural technology, i.e. the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which serve as the instruments of production for sustaining their life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man in society, of organs that are the material basis of every particular organization of society, deserve equal attention?"

(3) For Marx, individualism in humanism has been displaced, but a certain human causation continues, one he doesn't seem entirely willing to break free of. However, at the same time his writing also freely identifies non-human actants as being full actors. For 'the machine' reaches a certain point where it no longer is run by humans, but rather uses humans as appendages to the machine. Thus, in my dissertation, I explore how we become appendages to the machine. How the birth of a disciplinary subjectivity arises within the assembly line (understood both technologically and managerially) of the Chicago meat-packers. And how a whole complex of forces bring us to that moment (barbed wire fences, monopoly capital, railroads, refrigerator cars, mono-culture agriculture, specially breed animals, etc.). Marx's view of modes of production is absolutely essential for me to think all of this. At the same time, it is also essential that accelerate Marx's posthumanist tendencies, rather than his humanist ones.

(4) Time mentions that it is surprising that we don't have more Marxists engaging with speculative realism and new materialisms, but I think he is doubly incorrect in this part. First, I think we have a lot of Marxists dealing within those terrains, but not particularly older and more established Marxists (though Levi might be the only OOO Marxist out there). Second, it isn't that surprising that so many Marxists would be turned off when so many of those people engaging in speculative realism and new materialism seem specifically anti-Marxist (like Ian's position, Tim's own recent aside about how he isn't a Marxist, Delanda's strong rejection of Marxism, etc). But I don't think Tim really means Marxists in general here, he probably has certain Marxists in mind.



In the end, I think we will probably see increasingly larger number of Marxists engaging new materialisms, and new materialists and realists of all stripes also engaging Marxism. Or at least that is how all of this has always worked within my head.

(4)

But yeah, you really do have to read Heidegger if you want to understand Derrida

Without a doubt, probably the funniest video I have ever seen:


(h/t Adam)

I also wanted to suggest this new post by Levi on ideology. I am working on a longer response, but just in case I don't follow through, you should go read it. Really short version: (1) I mostly agree, and (2) Isn't it funny that he is engaging in ideology critique with those that engage exclusively or primarily in ideology critique? (and I don't mean intellectually weak or contradictory, I just mean humorous).

A complication to flat ethics and relational ethics

I am absurdly busy this week, so of course one of the more interesting cross-blog conversations has broken out. Let's see if I can trace this for everyone. Paul made the original post, following up on a discussion we were having about anti-correlationist thinking and the animal. Levi followed up by combining some of his earlier analysis on inhuman ethics with Paul's post. That then generated an excellent discussion in comments (read them), Peter made some short comments on his blog (here and here), and then both Paul and Adrian followed up on stuff they had said in comments in full length blog posts, and of course Levi found the time to already respond. (oh yeah, meanwhile Craig also decided to write an interesting post at his blog you all should read, even if it isn't directly a part of this conversation).

I don't have the time to respond to all of this stuff. Really any of it right now. So a short problematic that needs to be worked through in both flat ethics and relational ethics (not that those are necessarily different?). The problem is similar but slightly different for each.
In flat ethics we are trying to talk about how we can conceive of ethics (is it appropriate to say do justice?) that isn't just anthropocentric, or animal-centric, or even biocentric (right, Levi?), but rather does justice to all entities that are real. So, that's hard enough to even formulate the proposition, much less answer. But the fear is that such an extension could cause a defacto anthropocentricism (or pick your favorite -centrism). Let's bring this discussion to something those of us in the CAS movement understand, which is the extension of ethical treatment towards plants, which we dealt with briefly before on this blog. It is not uncommon for someone to respond to finding out someone is vegan (or vegetarian) by responding "What about plants?" sometimes this is meant as a joke, usually it is meant as an excuse not to explore the ethical. Though perhaps in the strongest formulation you will find this concept as part of what Derrida calls eating well, or what Haraway translates into the notion of killing well. If in order to live we have to eat/kill, than how should live in such a way to eat/kill well? In Derrida there isn't much to go on in his formulation, and it is a frustrating and interesting interview. In Haraway's boook When Species Meet, she develops her notion of killing well. And there is some thoughtful writing here about other animals, and balancing issues of ecology, etc. But she (and in many ways Derrida as well) doesn't deal with the question of killing humans. In short, it is hard to imagine she has created the same system for killing well humans as she as for animals. While human actions are under scrutiny in the work, an implicit anthropocentrism still seems to have hold over her notion (and I'd love nothing more to see her more directly take up this issue). By extending the ethical, we have to make sure that it doesn't foster a type of anthropocentrism (because I am concerned of plants and socks and Harry Potter and my cat and the bird he tries to hunt, etc) we end up declaring that tough choices have to be made! that still somehow excuses those same choices being made about humans. Obviously this is not at all a problem inherent in flat ethics, but is a problem that must be repeatedly and obviously guarded against.

In the relational ethics we have a similar issue, as I see. Adrian writes that:

But maybe there is a difference here after all... It's quite possible that an object-oriented ontology makes it easier to measure things that are fundamentally of the same kind (objects as defined in such and such a way), and is therefore more amenable to egalitarianism to the extent that "equality" is considered a kind of sameness that is distributed across a certain set of entities. A relational ontology, on the other hand, prefers to focus not on equality but on qualitivism -- that is, the notion that we should act in a way that preserves and enhances the quality of relations. I’ve argued elsewhere for an “ethic of circulating agency,” where what we value is that the ability to act, to pursue one’s goals, to respond to others, to grow and to flourish, is kept in motion , i.e., that it is actively distributed across the terrain within which the capacity emerges for such action, pursuit, responsiveness, and growth. I have yet to develop that idea in any philosophical depth, but I think it’s consistent with a poststructuralist and post-constructivist process-relational approach to politics.

First, let me clarify. By egalitarianism (which is my emphasis with the concept of flatness with ethics) I do not mean sameness, homogeneity, static being, etc. As I stated in a comment over at Levi's place, ethics means affirming both equality and difference. This is obviously a tricky thing, and my favorite formulation of it, perhaps weirdly, is by Peter Singer (I hesitate to ever bring him into discussions, because of how much weight dragging his name into a conversation tends to have. So let me state I do not mean to bring his philosophical apparatuses in whenever I quote him. I sometimes don't even mean what he means when I quote him, sometimes I just like his formulations), when states that we have to give equal consideration of interests. Now, he has some technical meanings for the terms interest and consideration, but of which I think we might be challenging. But this is what I mean by equality, in which an exceptionalism doesn't form in our ethical relationships. I like the idea of an ethic of circulating agency. But I would too wonder what it does with something like the notion of killing well or eating well. In short, how does an ethic of circulatory ethics deal with situations that are not win-win? How does it deal with situations where choices have to made that for some being to continue flourishing means that another being cannot continue to flourish? This is where egalitarianism becomes all the more necessary, otherwise some group or person or whatever will always cheat at these moments. Will claim that their interests are obviously more important than others. (And this might also be a good way to rethink interests, in terms of collective relations toward flourishing, rather than an individualistic utilitarian calculations). Again, not something inherent, but something that needs to be watched and guarded against.

Anyway, I think this discussion has been wonderful so far. I know we are all busy, but I hope it continues. And maybe when the blogging begins to slow down we can formulate some sort of more concrete exchange (special journal issue, formalized virtual conference, real conference, etc.).

Nishida Kitaro as speculative realist (of the OOP branch)

So, I was rereading "The Standpoint of Active Intuition" by Nishida (trans. William Haver). And I was amazed by how obviously his arguments would enter strongly into the current speculative realism/OOPs dialogues. A lot of it is particularly strong, but I post two paragraphs to give a sense of what I mean.

What sort of thing is space? The space that I here take to be a problem does not mean geometrical space; it is actually existing space. What is called “space” is thought to be diametrically opposed to time. Things exist simultaneously in space. Space is the relation of interchangeability of thing and thing. To say that things exist simultaneously, to say that the relation of thing and thing is one of interchangeability, is to negate time. But it is not actually existing space that has negated time; necessarily, actually existing space must subsume the temporal. Actually existing space must be thought as the place [basho]* of the mutual working of thing and thing. Thus, what works mutually must together be independent; what works must be something of the singular thing. Actually existing space must be the mediation that mutually relates singular thing and singular thing together; it must be the mediation of the continuity of discontinuity. What works must be temporal; it must be thought to be within time. If not, then it is no different than a geometrical form. But time, as I said before, must be utterly spatial. What is thought, as the unity of time, to be circular must be something “spatial.” There is no space that subsumes the instant of time. The instant of time must be that which cannot even be thought as the spatial extreme limit-point of the division of a curved line. There is no universal that subsumes the singular thing. The singular thing cannot even be thought as the extreme limit of individuation; the truly singular thing is something that has gone beyond the universal. The synthetic is not what is independent in itself. The further one carries an analysis, the more do thing and force [chikara] alike become infinitesimal; force must be thought as instantaneous. But time and space are never unified, the vertical never becomes the horizontal. Yet actually existing space must be temporal; physical space must be four-dimensional. Something like a collection of points is not actually existing space. Actually existing space must possess the characteristic of the circular unity that links the before and after of time. Time truly becomes time because it negates time itself; it is because space negates space itself that it becomes true space. Where there is interior qua exterior, exterior qua interior, subject* qua the objective*, the objective qua subject [shukan soku kyakkan, kyakkan, soku shukan], there is the self-identity of time and space; there is established actually existing time and space, as the mutually opposed aspects of dialectical self-identity. The affirmation of the self-negation of time must be space; the affirmation of the self-negation of space must be time.

What we call the actually existing world must be a world of the interacting of thing and thing. What interacts must be things that are both utterly independent; they must partake of the nature of the singular thing. Thing and thing can be thought to be mutually interacting as the mutual relation of what are both independent things. In order to say that thing and thing relate mutually, there must be something called a mediation. Yet if that mediation is thought as continuity, there is no mutual interaction. To the extent that what is mediated is mediated to the extent that it possesses the characteristics of what mediates. It is usually thought that it is on the basis of the fact that thing and thing are mediated spatially, they mutually interact, but we can say that thing and thing mutually interact, that thing and thing are spatially mediated to the extent that the thing possesses the characteristics of space. If one pushes such a notion to its logical conclusion, one might conclude that the thing is something like an aspect of the mediation. And the notion that thing and thing interact disappears. Is that then to think that the mediation is merely nothing [mu]* and that thing and thing are merely discontinuous? What is merely without relation cannot even be said to interact. Therefore, what is called the mediation of acting thing and thing must be the continuity of discontinuity; it must be in the fact that being is nothing and nothing being [yu ni shite mu, mu ni shite yu]. And so what we call the mediation of the mutual relation of independent things must be circular; it must be a parallelism. To say that A is independent with respect to B, and that moreover they relate to each other, is necessarily to say that A stands in a similar relation to C, and similarly with B and C. What is called the actually existing world can be thought in the above manner as the world of the mediation of discontinuity, as the world of the dialectical universal. It is neither to think the thing before the mediation, nor to think mediation before the thing. There is neither mediation without the acting thing, nor can one speak of the acting without the mediation. To say that the mediation of the continuity of discontinuity itself determines itself is to say that thing and thing interact; to say that thing and thing interact is to say that the mediation of the continuity of discontinuity itself determines itself. This is to say that place [basho]* determines place itself; it is to speak of the self-determination of the dialectical universal.

Speculative Realism/Critical Animal Studies: The Event

Just in case you weirdly read this blog, but not the group blog, check out this post explaining an upcoming event exploring the interactions of speculative realism and critical animal studies. I am calling it The Speculative Animal event, but no one else has signed off on that language, if you know what I mean.

Also, Calarco has a response up on the Levinas section. I think his ultimate explanation of destroying morality is really quite worthwhile of a read.

The role of 'phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis' in CAS

I'd like to thank both Levi Bryant and Graham Harman for their generous responses to my "10 questions for speculative realists." (If anyone else has responded and I have missed it, please let me know!). There are many potential blog posts I want to make in response to their responses, but for now I am going to stick to the role of 'phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis' in critical animal studies. But let me begin by retracing the parts of Bryant's arguments that matter for this post.

Bryant, in explaining what holds together the real but non-existent speculative realist movement he argues:

In short, all of the SR positions share the thesis that the human and human phenomena have no special place within being and are opposed to the thesis that we must start with an analysis of something pertaining to the human (mind, history, language, power, signs, etc.) to properly pose questions of ontology.

It seems to me this rejection of anthropocentrism is also the starting point for critical animal studies (And I should add I find Bryant's formulation elegant. Philosophy can always use more elegant formulations.), even if (most) CAS heads in some very different directions than (most) SR after this rejection of anthropocentric ontology. I think one of the ways to understand this difference is by examining another common opposition that Bryant posits for SR:

On the other hand, I think all of those in the speculative realist camp are deeply exhausted by styles of philosophy that begin from the standpoint of critique (in the Kantian sense), the phenomenological analysis of experience, hermeneutics, and textual analysis. There’s a sense that these approaches to philosophy, as powerful and valuable as they are, have exhausted their possibilities and are standing in the way of engaging with the sorts of questions demanded by our contemporary moment. For example, its difficult to imagine something less relevant than phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis to the sorts of issues posed by the ecological crisis. Ecology just requires a very different set of conceptual tools. Moreover, we are living in the midst of one of the most remarkable periods in scientific and mathematical development and invention, yet we have a group of philosophers continuing to pretend that the Greeks said it all and that philosophy largely ended at the beginning of the 19th century. It is also simply bizarre to think that these developments are adequately thematized through the resources of textual analysis or semiotics. We need to become a bit more pre-critical again, I think, to adequately discuss these sorts of issues.

I am, in many ways, very sympathetic to this argument. In many ways also in strong agreement (this odd obsession with Greek as origin, and origin as the authentic and true seems relatively useless to me). But if we replace ecology with the systematic exploitation of animals (and of course, recognizing that the exploitation there is deeply implicated in the present ecological crisis), I doubt highly that "phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, or deconstructive textual analysis" have exhausted themselves in changing the status of the animal. Not only have phenomenological moments with nonhuman animals been crucial for many people changing their views regarding animal exploitation, but it seems that humanism and speciesism are strongly powerful in maintaining the systematic exploitation of animals. If we are to change things, I feel that confronting how this humanism and speciesism is maintained from their roots to their present formulation is a necessary move, which means critique is a necessary tool for CAS. This critical element needs to be centered not just on political and philosophical texts, but also on present media and scientific texts. At the same time, I agree we need to pay more attention to some of the present movements in current scientific discourses. Indeed, CAS is also interesting as a philosophical movement because of its strong interest in things like current evolutionary discourses, primatology, cognitive ethology, etc. (And indeed, one of the few major continental philosophers that seemed to be particularly interested in these things was Derrida).
I should have a conclusion here, I know. But I don't, not really. I don't think my argument is against SR, and I don't think SR invalidates CAS. I am merely trying to create a dialogue with another intellectual movement that begins with a similar anti-anthropocentric position.

10 questions for speculative realists (and a coda about my almost life as a speculative realist)

Graham Harman recently linked to this blog to talk about Greg's post on the midwest. Which reminded me of a blog post I had been meaning to make for about a month now.


Now, I recognize that many of the questions I ask would probably be answered if I read all your books and all your posts ever. But, that seems unlikely to happen right this second, and I am interested in things I have seen posted or in the books I have read, and hope that this will both clarify things and intensify my interests. If you want to link me to things where you feel some of these questions have already been answered, please feel free.


10 questions for speculative realists:

(1) For an intellectual movement that has such a strong internet presence, why do you all have such an unhelpful wikipedia entry?

(2) What are the major different currents of speculative realism? I just would not have thought to combine many of you together as part of a philosophical movement (school? gathering?). So, what holds you all together as an idea? What are the major different currents?

(3) I know not all of you have a beef with Foucault, but I have seen several vaguely dismissive comments from the object-oriented types about Foucault. So, what is the matter with Foucault?

(4) I have also seen responses from several of you against accusations that you don't have a politics. The responses have tended towards variations of "We have a politics, but we don't subvert our ontology to our politics." Which is fine, but for me raises far more questions than it answers: What are your politics? Are your politics separate from your ontology, or do you feel that your politics flow from your ontology?

(5) Question number four leads me to this question, which you might or might not want to group in with the last answer. Are you concerned with the question of first philosophy, or do you find such questions rather boring? Do you believe that you have to get your ontology right first in order to have a politics and/or an ethics, or do you feel that the domain of ontology has a certain separability from these other philosophical domains?

(6) Why did the speculative realist cross the road? Or, alternatively, how many speculative realists does it take to change a light bulb (please give number and reason for that number)?

(7) Can you suggest two books by Bruno Latour I should get around to reading sooner rather than later? I have read Science in Action, but that was several ago, and could be convinced to reread it.

(8) This is a blog dedicated, at least on some level, to critical animal studies. Obviously, speculative realism's anti-humanist and anti-anthropocentrist viewpoints are somewhat in line with the problematic of critical animal studies, however, what can you foresee as the relationship between speculative realism and critical animal studies, if any? Clearly, an ontology of generalized actors (whereby rocks and plants and machines are as much actors as humans and animals) might guarantee an non-anthropocentric ontology, but does not guarantee a non-anthropocentric ethics. Which is fine, but I am just pointing out that there seems to be no obvious connection between the two philosophical movements.

(9)Obviously there are some interesting questions about how speculative realism relates to the big branches of contemporary philosophy -- How does speculative realism relate to continental philosophy? How does speculative realism relate to analytic philosophy? -- but what I am really curious about is how does speculative realism relate to decolonial philosophy? I probably wouldn't even think about asking about this, except a recent post by k-punk that talked about how Badiou helped awaken him from a deleuzian slumber. For me, Badiou had nothing to do with my awakening from a Deleuzian slumber (if anything he only intensified my affection for Deleuze and Guattari, the same with Zizek), but decolonial philosophy and the philosophy of radical women of color completely changed my relationship with continental philosophy. Reza obviously has serious engagement with Iranian thought, but what about speculative philosophy in general?

(10) What is the difference between realism and materialism? Why are you speculative realists instead of speculative materialists?



A coda:

This part of the post might be rather self-indulgent, so feel free to stop reading. The thing that interests me about speculative realism is that I feel that I was well on my way to being a speculative realist when I was an undergrad. I was obsessed with Deleuze and Guattari (still am, really), and felt their work existed in tension with Heidegger and Derrida whom I was not particularly fond of (still anti-heidegger, but I have come to find Derrida very useful). Instead of Derrida and Heidegger, the language-oriented thinkers I found interesting were Bakhtin and Paul de Man. Bakhtin seemed committed to a strong materialism in his work, and I liked how de Man's view of inhuman grammar machines gave grammar its own agency outside of merely human agency. I had read Niklas Luhmann, and found him very helpful, as well as many essays by John Law. I read everything I could get my hands on by Delanda, and because of him read all three volumes of Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism. I read all of Grant's early essays, and also traded emails with Reza. My undergraduate thesis was on how Deleuze's notion of control was an assemblage that existed outside of an immediate human agency but instead was dependent upon a system of actors. So, my interest in speculative realism is because before it was a movement with a name was I very interested in it, and now it exists and it makes me realize how much things have changed for me (and how much they have stayed the same).