Critical Animal has posed a series of questions to the so-called “Speculative Realists”. I’ll take a stab at trying to respond to some of them.
(1) For an intellectual movement that has such a strong internet presence, why do you all have such an unhelpful wikipedia entry?
No doubt this has to do with those who are writing the wiki entries. It would be rather self-indulgent to write one’s own wiki 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?
It seems to me that the major currents among the speculative realists are those of reductive materialism (Brassier), materialism (Meillassoux), object-oriented ontology (Harman, Latour, and myself), perhaps variants of vitalism (Grant?), Deleuzian thought (DeLanda, myself), and many other variants aside. The speculative realists are more united by what they oppose, than by the philosophical claims they share in common. 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. For my own part (and I think Harman and Latour would agree with me here), this does not entail that these things are unworthy of study or should be dismissed, only that everything else shouldn’t be subordinated to them. Moreover, Latour, Deleuze, and myself all hold that we cannot study the social in abstraction but that nonhuman objects or actors are key components of the social that make their own contributions and which aren’t simply vehicles for signs or power. Irreductions is really good on this point. Apart from that, there are pretty marked differences among the various speculative realists. For example, Brassier seems to advocate a reductive materialism where only things like subatomic particles and neurons are real, whereas Harman and myself are more pluralist, counting anything from the atom to the character of Harry Potter as being real. In other words “Speculative Realism” does not exist.
Each one of these positions develops a positive ontology, very different from the others. If things continue this way– and there seems to be every likelihood it will given the rise of Deleuze and Guattari, Badiou, and Meillassoux in theory circles –”speculative realism” will very quickly shift from debates with correlationists to debates among one another in years to come. In other words, it seems like the day of a particular kind of philosophy is passing very quickly. These debates are already beginning. Thus, for example, we see Hallward critiquing both Deleuze and Badiou. We see Harman critiquing DeLanda, Latour, and Grant. We see Brassier critiquing Deleuze, Badiou, and Meillassoux. All of these critiques are productive, but nonetheless they do mark real differences.
(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?
I can only speak for myself with respect to Foucault. On the one hand, I have a deep admiration for Foucault. On the other hand, I find Foucault problematic for two reasons: First, I see Foucault, despite his avowed anti-humanism, as a variant of correlationism. All beings of the world are filtered through discursive formations and power structures, enjoying no autonomy or being of their own. On the other hand, following Latour, Foucault treats power and discursive formations as explanatory principles, in much the same way that a sociologist might appeal to “society” or “social forces” to explain some phenomenon. However, society, power, and discursive structures explain nothing, rather they are what is to be explained. In other words, the object-oriented philosopher holds that we must examine how these things come to be assembled, put together, etc through networks of objects of actors. Objects or actors are not explained by reference to power, discursivity, and social forces, but rather the reverse: power, discursivity, and social forces are explained through objects or actors. Foucault gets it backwards. With that said, there is nothing to prevent an object-oriented approach to Foucault’s thought that surmounts this problem. However, it’s worth noting that the way Foucault articulates his theory and his actual theoretical practice differ markedly. In his theoretical articulation it’s all power and discursive regimes. In his practice, by contrast, we see him discussing all sorts of assemblages that include human and nonhuman actors. This is what renders a Foucaultian object-oriented philosophy possible. I should also add that one of the things I find deeply attractive about OOP is that it allows you to retain a number of the key discoveries of the correlationists– in modified form, of course –without falling into the anti-realist camp.
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