Responding to my perplexity as to just what to call OOO’s engagement with the history of philosophy with realism as its guiding clue, Paul Ennis proposes the term “re-construction”:

That may be a warning. I’ve not seen you struggle to name things before. You seem to have a talent for it. I would add that whatever the project is named it ought to be an ‘explosive’ name. Why? Otherwise it risks becoming another jaded catch-phrase or cliche (a new semiotic toy).

The other, cheeky I admit, possibility is that we are the true re-constructors who are beyond the deconstruction. Sure Derrida was neccessary, but now its time for the real work. In this sense we would be engaged in a Re-Struction of the History of Ontology. Instead of sneaking up on texts in order to discover presence we sneak up on texts and try to find when they came closest to onticology (or when they gave objects a fair shake of the stick).

I think this is a brilliant suggestion that also resonates nicely with certain points Bogost makes about the limited nature of de-construction in his recent interview. I especially like the cheekiness of this proposal as I think, among certain strains of speculative realism, there is a sort of Monty Pythonesque dimension. In Graham you get the carnivalesque as a constant point of reference. Clowns are constantly flying about alongside cotton, fire, armies, and a menagerie of objects worthy of the strange literature of Ben Marcus. The abbreviated term “OOO” is designed to resonate in an amusing manner. I often describe my ontic principle as a sort of joke that mocks the idea of getting at the “really real” being of being altogether insofar as if something makes a difference then it is, i.e., let’s get back to work. Even the term “object-oriented philosophy” is a bit of a joke or thumbing of the nose at the reigning tradition of anti-realism, not unlike the French soldier that “farts in the general direction” of the crusaders in The Holy Grail. Re-construction would be yet another nice satirical turn.

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