Monday, December 27, 2010

"The Speculative Turn" Available as Open Access Publication

http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/9780980668346-frontcover.jpg

The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism,
edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, is an awesome anthology of articles on Speculative Realism and other variations, including a materialist variation and Object-Oriented Ontology. All of these topics fit under rubric of The Speculative Turn (echoing the linguistic turn).

Here is the table of contents:
1 Towards a Speculative Philosophy
Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman
2 Interview
Alain Badiou and Ben Woodard
3 On the Undermining of Objects: Grant, Bruno, and Radical Philosophy
Graham Harman
4 Mining Conditions: A Response to Harman
Iain Hamilton Grant
5 Concepts and Objects
Ray Brassier
6 Does Nature Stay What-it-is?: Dynamics and the Antecendence Criterion
Iain Hamilton Grant
7 Against Speculation, or, A Critique of the Critique of Critique:
A Remark on Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude (After Colletti)
Alberto Toscano
8 Hume’s Revenge: À Dieu, Meillassoux?
Adrian Johnston
9 Radical Atheist Materialism: A Critique of Meillassoux
Martin Hägglund
10 Anything is Possible: A Reading of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude
Peter Hallward
11 The Speculative and the Specific: On Hallward and Meillassoux
Nathan Brown
vi Contents
12 Capitalism and the Non-Philosophical Subject
Nick Srnicek
13 Drafting the Inhuman: Conjectures on Capitalism and Organic Necrocracy
Reza Negarestani
14 Is it Still Possible to be a Hegelian Today?
Slavoj Žižek
15 Potentiality and Virtuality
Quentin Meillassoux, translated by Robin Mackay
16 The Generic as Predicate and Constant: Non-Philosophy and Materialism
François Laruelle, translated by Taylor Adkins
17 The Ontic Principle: Outline of an Object-Oriented Ontology
Levi R. Bryant
18 The Actual Volcano: Whitehead, Harman, and the Problem of Relations
Steven Shaviro
19 Response to Shaviro
Graham Harman
20 Reflections on Etienne Souriau’s Les différents modes d’existence
Bruno Latour, translated by Stephen Muecke
21 Outland Empire: Prolegomena to Speculative Absolutism
Gabriel Catren, translated by Taylor Adkins
22 Wondering about Materialism
Isabelle Stengers
23 Emergence, Causality and Realism
Manuel DeLanda
24 Ontology, Biology, and History of Affect
John Protevi
25 Interview
Slavoj Žižek and Ben Woodard
From the introductory chapter (Towards a Speculative Philosophy), here is a very brief overview of the book's structure:
The collection opens with Ben Woodard’s interview with Alain Badiou, who discusses the importance of the emerging speculative trends. Situating his own work with respect to speculative realism, Badiou recognizes many shared principles, but notes the absence in the younger thinkers of anything resembling Badiou’s own theory of the ‘event’. Such a theory, Badiou insists, is both a political and metaphysical imperative for philosophy. This is immediately followed by the first section, which collects recent pieces by the original Speculative Realists; several of these were presented at the movement’s second workshop, held in Bristol in April 2009. The second section compiles a series of critical responses to Meillassoux’s After Finitude, a signature work of speculative realism. The third section assembles some of the emerging political work being done under the umbrella of continental materialism and realism. The fourth section mobilizes a range of metaphysical essays, showcasing the diversity and rigor of the new philosophical trends. The fifth and final section tackles the question of how continental materialism relates to science, offering a diverse set of perspectives on just what this entails.
You can download the PDF book at this link (down load book as PDF [open source]). And here is the publisher's blurb for the book:
Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the current giants of this generation, this new focus takes numerous different and opposed forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the center of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come.
This is exactly the resource that I have been needing since an online friend suggested I look into Speculative Realism. This is great.


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