Speculative Realism Pathfinder
|
This guide was created to
help
students, faculty, and other interested parties find materials related
to the
emerging school of philosophical thought known as Speculative Realism.
I have linked each of the texts listed in the final section to their
Google Books entry in an attempt to make this guide useful to all;
Google Books lists the prices of various book retailers and has a "Find
in a Library" link which can be used to find a freely-available copy
near you.
These sites provide useful overviews of the Speculative Realism movement as well as its many variants and sub-species. While they range in depth from a blog aggregator with hundreds of posts to a brief encyclopedia entry, all are valuable overviews of the field.
Speculative
Realism –
Wikipedia: A public-edited introduction to the genre of philosophy
known as
Speculative Realism. This is a good starting place for those unfamiliar
with
philosophical lexicons. Almost all of the major Speculative Realists
who have published books also have their own separate Wikipedia entries.
Collapse Vol. II – “Speculative Realism”: The Collapse
journal has strong ties to
speculative realism, including this feature issue containing essays by
premier speculative realists Ray
Brassier, Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, and Reza Negarestani.
Speculative Realism Blog Aggregator: A one-stop site for posts by bloggers associated with the Speculative Realism movement. It might be hard to keep up with the quantity of content on the Aggregator but it does give an idea of how much of the blogosphere participates in Speculative Realism debates.
Eliminative
Materialism
–
Stanford
Encyclopedia
of
Philosophy: A thorough overview of
what is considered a sub-species of Speculative Realism. Eliminative
Materialism has been published on throughout the 1990s and is much more
well-documented than much of the Speculative Realism school of thought.
What
is Actor-Network Theory?: As with Eliminative Materialism,
Actor-Network Theory has been around since the 1990s and is of great
interest to the Speculative Realist theorists. This excellent website
provides concise definitions of the theory from a multitude of scholars
while linking to the cited works and providing further reference
sources at the very bottom of the page.
Speculative Realism promises to be the first philosophy meaningfully engaged with Web 2.0: several of its primary figures are bloggers. The movement gains momentum from discussions between graduate students, interested amateurs, and philosophy professors alike. Many of the bloggers listed here make an effort to respond to intriguing comments posted on their blogs and welcome public debate.
· Larval Subjects by Levi Bryant: An excellent and accessible blog by Collin County Community College Professor of Philosophy Levi Bryant. Bryant’s blog is an especially great starting point for those interested in speculative realism because on his Blogroll he denotes speculative realist blogs with an asterisk.
· Speculative Heresy by Ben Woodard, Nick Srnicek, and Taylor Adkins: This trio of graduate student bloggers have created perhaps the most comprehensive resource of all via a collaborative approach. This blog is notable for its tabs featuring Resources (a collection of pertinent articles), Events (conferences and speeches), Faculty (a list of hyperlinks to speculative realist professors), and Translations (hard-to-find translations of works by major French theorists).
· Object-Oriented Philosophy by Graham Harman: Harman, Associate Vice Provost for Research and member of the Philosophy Department at the American University of Cairo, quickly became one of the most-visited and prolific bloggers when he started this blog, which addresses not only speculative realism but also issues of writing style and challenges for would-be philosophers.
· Another Heidegger Blog by Paul John Ennis: This blog houses a multitude of interviews with speculative realists and related philosophers, including fellow-bloggers Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman. Ennis is a graduate student of philosophy at University College in Dublin, Ireland.
· Naught Thought by Ben Woodard: Like most Wordpress blogs, Naught Thought features useful tags on each article which can help identify its topic and whether or not it specifically addresses Speculative Realism. Woodard is a graduate student in philosophy at the European Graduate School.
· The Accursed Share by Nick Srnicek: As Srnicek’s personal blog, this deals more with issues of politics and social change using the tools of Speculative Realism and Actor-Network Theory. However, it also functions as a source of conference and call for papers information. Nick Srnicek is a PhD student at the London School of Economics.
·
Complete Lies
by Michael Austin: A pithy blog which frequently sums up inter-blog
debates and
provides the author’s own opinion. Austin is a graduate student at the
Memorial
University of Newfoundland and frequently updates the Wikipedia page
for
Speculative Realism under the name Zorio.
The three philosophers below have been associated with Speculative Realism and published extensively on the philosophy, in online forums as well as in traditional print mediums. Though Twitter is too concise for rigorous discussion, it can provide glimpses into the lives of these theorists as well as useful links.
· onticologist: Levi Bryant, author of Difference and Givenness: Deleuze's Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence.
· doctorzamalek (private profile): Graham Harman, author of Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things.
· NaughtThought: Ben Woodard, author of the Naught Thought blog.
· nsrnicek (private profile): Nick Srnicek, co-editor of the forthcoming The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism.
·
zorio: Michael
Austin, author of the Complete Lies
blog.
While Speculative Realism may be the first philosophical movement to fully benefit from social media and other recent web trends, the most serious work is still done in the form of dense texts littered with citations from theorists old and new. Here is a list, far from comprehensive, of the first few speculative realist books which founded the school of thought and are generally representative of its views. Each text is linked to its Google Books entry or, if available, the UIUC online catalog record.
·
After
Finitude:
An
Essay
on
the
Necessity
of
Contingency by Quentin
Meillassoux: Meillassoux’s book is considered the prototypical
Speculative
Realist work, introducing the pivotal concept of “correlationism” and
setting
this new realm of philosophy apart from its predecessors. ISBN-13:
9780826496744 (hardcover), 9781441173836 (paperback).
·
`Cyclonopedia:
Complicity
with
Anonymous
Materials by Reza Negarestani: Cyclonopedia is a fiction novel that
engages heavily with the issues at the heart of this philosophy. While
this
genre-bending book may not technically be a work of theory, it is
equally
ill-placed beside contemporary fiction and many philosophers have
referenced it
and consider it part of the emerging Speculative Realist canon. ISBN-13:
9780980544008 (paperback).
Guerrilla
Metaphysics:
Phenomenology
and
the
Carpentry
of
Things by
Graham
Harman:
Harman’s
use
of
humor
and
concrete
examples
make
his
writing
an
excellent
starting
place
for
those
usually intimidated by philosophical
writing. Herein, he turns phenomenology on its
head, using it as a tool
to
investigate “the objects themselves” rather than mere human perception
of objects. ISBN-13: 9780812694567 (paperback).
·
Nihil
Unbound:
Enlightenment
and
Extinction by Ray Brassier: In one
of
the more difficult works in the field, Brassier draws on the
jargon-dense
“non-philosophy” of contemporary François Laurelle, arguing for
a nihilistic
reduction of human existence and renewed focus on material reality. ISBN-13: 9780230522046 (hardcover), 9780230522053
(paperback).
·
Reassembling
the
Social:
an
Introduction
to
Actor-Network
Theory
by Bruno
Latour: Latour is one of the most established of the speculative
realists,
having published numerous books through the 1980s to present. This book
is a
good overview of a certain species of Speculative Realist thought which
focuses
on how networks, i.e. the connection between active agents, constitute
society. ISBN-13: 9780199256044 (hardcover), 9780199256051 (paperback).
Philosophies
of
Nature
after
Schelling by Iain Hamilton Grant: In his first
original book, Grant argues for a renewed focus on the inorganic realm,
drawing supporting arguments from 19th-century German philosopher
Friedrich Schelling and arguing against the legacy of Immanuel Kant,
which is seen as unjustly privileging the position of humans in
existence. ISBN-13: 9780826479020
(hardcover), 9781847064325 (paperback).
The Speculative
Turn:
Continental Materialism and Realism (forthcoming) edited by
Levi
Bryant, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman: this book promises to be an
excellent
introduction to the emerging field of Speculative Realism, featuring a
breadth
essays by almost all major theorists associated with the movement.
ISBN-13:
9780980668346.
Tool-Being:
Heidegger
and
the
Metaphysics
of
Objects by Graham Harman: Harman’s
first book is an interesting case study in how Speculative Realists use
the
philosophical methods of previous generations to their own ends, as
Harman
singles out a specific passage by Heidegger and explores its manifold
consequences, in the process going further than Heidegger dared to
venture. ISBN-13: 9780812694444 (paperback).
E. Terms
To the terms themselves! Each is listed alongside theorists whose
positions have been (at one point) identified with the term.
• Actor-Network Theory (Bruno Latour, Michel Callon)
• Assemblage Theory (Manuel DeLanda)
• Eliminative Materialism (Patricia Churchland, Paul
Churchland)
• Methodological Naturalism (Ray Brassier)
• Neo-Vitalism (Iain Hamilton Grant)
• Object-Oriented Philosophy (Graham Harman, Levi
Bryant)
• Revisionary Naturalism (Ray Brassier)
• Spectral Realism (Michael Austin)
• Speculative Materialism (Quentin Meillassoux)
• Speculative Realism (Ray Brassier originally coined
this term, but in the aforementioned interview he dismisses it as
having become “singularly unhelpful” [2009])
• Transcendental Materialism (Iain Hamilton Grant)
• Transcendental Nihilism (Ray Brassier)
• Transcendental Realism (Ray Brassier, Roy Bhaskar)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Graduate School of Library & Information Science
This views on this website are solely the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of the University of Illinois, GSLIS,
the philosophers themselves, or any of the many firebreathing bloggers
out there in the web.
Comments and constructive criticism are welcome: phette23[at]gmail.com.
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