Potentiality of the Present: Exploring Speculative Realism VIA Spatial Theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
Brad D. Baumgartner
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
Spatial Studies ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Important Link ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Cultural Amnesia

In this essay, I propose a new alliance between speculative realism and spatial theory. Whether interpreted as an avant-garde movement or simply as part of an evolution in human thought, the Speculative Turn in continental philosophy has an important link to spatial studies, a field replete with the study of imaginative and speculative texts. By applying various spatial theories to this unique philosophical movement, and thereby implicating ourselves within a space where we become linked in spatial being, we can endeavor to think the absolute from a place of ‘radical contingency’ and spatiality. This analysis, then, historicizes the movement via its academic and para-academic manifestations, as it asserts a mode of remembering that invokes the loss of cultural amnesia. Thus, it demonstrates that speculative realism is a good candidate for further critical inquiry, but also that spatial studies, with its interdisciplinary lens often informing and creating the cultural worlds we inhabit, is a good candidate for speculative realism to cast its exploratory vision.

Presenting the Unpresentable: Jean-François Lyotard’s Kantian Art-Sublime

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rachel Zuckert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Absolute

Abstract This article reconstructs Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of the sublime in contemporary art, focusing on his claim that such art ‘presents’ the unpresentable, and tracing its origins in Kant’s account of the sublime. I propose that Lyotard identifies a difficulty concerning Kant’s account: to understand why the disparate elements in the experience of the sublime (idea of reason, sensible representation) should be synthesized to form that experience. Lyotard recasts this difficulty as a pragmatic problem for artistic practice – how to ‘testify’ to the absolute in a non-absolute, sensibly perceivable object (the artwork) – that can be understood to drive avant-garde artistic experimentation.

Before Infinitude: A Levinasian Response to Meillassoux’s Speculative Realism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Braver
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Human Rationality ◽  
Ethical Experience

This chapter argues that like Meillassoux, Levinas opposes correlationism—a term encompassing both idealism and anti-realism in philosophy. However, Levinas’s attempt to overcome correlationism differs markedly from that of Meillassoux. Whereas Meillassoux argues that mathematizable, scientific discourse can determine facts about reality independent of human thought or awareness, Levinas appeals to an ethical experience of the other that remains correlated with awareness but transcend human rationality. Their attempts to overcome correlationism are thus reverse images of each other: whereas Meillassoux uses reason to transcend experience, Levinas appeals to experience to transcend reason. Taken together, these disparate approaches point to a more nuanced understanding of correlationism and its possible overcoming.

Neither Substance Nor Process I: Anti-Reductionism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Cogburn
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

The first chapter focuses on Garcia’s arguments against reductionism, with (i) an explanation of Garcia’s affirmation of ontological liberality, and (ii) a discussion of Garcia’s important supplementary arguments against the view that some putative entities are not things. The first few sections of the chapter contain an analysis of Garcia’s argument against what Graham Harman calls overmining and undermining. Both philosophers’ efforts are tied to contemporary work concerning reductionism in analytic philosophy. This discussion motivates (i) a brief presentation of Harman’s account of Heidegger’s “readiness-to-hand”, (ii) a discussion of capacity metaphysics, and (iii) Garcia’s differential ontology of objects. In this manner, Garcia’s central motivation and broad picture are situated with respect to recent trends in continental philosophy, particularly speculative realism and object-oriented ontology.

Stream of Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Hu
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
William James ◽  
Thought Processes ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Dramatic Monologue ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Narrative Mode

The term ‘stream of consciousness’ was first coined by psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology in 1893, when he describes it thusly: "consciousness as an uninterrupted ‘flow’: ‘a ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life" (243). The term quickly came to mean a narrative mode that seeks to give the written equivalent of a character’s thought processes, and is sometimes described in terms of an ‘interior monologue’. As such, it differs from the ‘dramatic monologue’ or ‘soliloquy’ where the speaker addresses the audience or an implied receiver. Stream of consciousness style is often identified by fictional techniques such as lack of punctuation, long and sometimes agrammatical sentences, and a series of unrelated impressions. Stream of consciousness technique tries to represent a character’s general mental state before it is condensed, organized, or edited down into narrative coherence or sense. While stream of consciousness is often read as an avant-garde technique, its aims were to get closer to the ‘reality’ of human thought processes. As a narrative technique, stream of consciousness maintains affiliations with other modernist art forms, such as the visual art of German expressionism, Cubism, and modernist film.

scholarly journals Fields of Sense and Formal Things: The Ontologies of Tristan Garcia and Markus Gabriel

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Arjen Kleinherenbrink
Keyword(s):  
Specific Problem ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
The Core ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Core Features

Abstract A striking feature of the relatively new philosophical genre of speculative realism is that it includes theories that explicitly seek to bridge or overcome the divide between analytic and continental philosophy. Two such theories are Markus Gabriel’s ontology of fields of sense and Tristan Garcia’s ontology of formal things. Both theories hold that all entities - be they physical, mental, fictional, technical, or otherwise - are equally and irreducibly real. This article first describes the core features of these ontologies. This provides insight into these theories themselves and also gives us a glimpse of what philosophy ‘beyond the divide’ might look like. In addition, both theories are shown to be examples of what I will call ‘relational’ philosophy, or philosophy that exhaustively defines entities in terms of how they appear to or feature in other entities. I argue that all such philosophies are haunted by the ‘infinite deferral of specification,’ a specific problem that I argue renders them inconsistent. Finally, I oppose such ‘relationist’ philosophies to ‘substantialist’ ones, and suggest that this distinction might one day succeed the division between analytic and continental philosophy.

Transhumanism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Pilsch
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Media Culture ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
History Of

This book argues that transhumanism should be taken more seriously as a Utopian force in the present. Combatting the widespread idea that transhumanism is a naive and dangerous reframing of the most excessive forms humanist thought, this book situates the contemporary transhumanist movement within the longer history of a rhetorical mode Pilsch calls "evolutionary futurism." Evolutionary futurism is a way of arguing about technology that suggests that global telecommunications technologies, in expanding the geographic range of human thought, radically reshape the future of the human species. Evolutionary futurist argumentation makes the case that we, as a species, are on the cusp of a radical explosion in cognitive, physical, and cultural intelligence. Transhumanism surveys the varying uses of evolutionary futurism throughout the 20th century, as it appears in a wide array of fields. This book unearths evolutionary futurist argumentation in modernist avant-garde poetry, theosophy, science fiction, post-structural philosophy, Christian mysticism, media theory, conceptual art, and online media culture. Ultimately, the book suggests that evolutionary futurism, in the age of the collapse of the state as a unit for imagining Utopia, works by highlighting the human as the limit that must be overcome if we are to imagine new futures for our culture, our planet, and ourselves.

System and/as Contingency: Quentin Meillassoux and the Ethics of Chance

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93
Author(s):  
Kevin Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Universal Principle ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Model ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
Systematic Knowledge ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

In recent years, the relation between contingency and systematic claims to the absolute has again come to play an important role in Continental philosophy. This essay takes a closer look at how this relation is developed in the works of French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux. It argues that a specific demand for systematic knowledge underlies not only Meillassoux's ontology, but also his ethics, which come into conflict with his own systematic aspirations in certain key areas, most notably in his attempt to derive an ethico-political model of subjectivity from his theory of contingency. The essay furthermore explores whether Meillassoux's monism of chance, by systematizing contingency and declaring it a universal principle, does not in fact deprive the contingent of its contingent character, introducing a reductive stability that condemns the subject to a passive waiting ultimately lacking in ethical significance.

scholarly journals Speculative Fetishism

Konturen ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Tracy McNulty
Keyword(s):  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Negative Judgment ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
A Charge ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

Quentin Meillassoux, like his mentor Alain Badiou, is sometimes accused by his critics of “fetishizing mathematics.” Without embracing the negative judgment implied in such a charge, this essay asks: what might be gained by taking seriously the link between fetishism and speculative philosophy? The claim that Meillassoux “fetishizes” mathematics potentially reveals something fundamental not only about the formalism at the heart of his speculative realism (whose “glaciality,” inanimacy, or inhuman character might sustain a certain disavowal, namely of “finitude” or castration) but about fetishism itself, whose philosophical character is attested not only by its ideality or relation to the absolute, but by its concern with thought or construction. The aim of this essay is thus not to dwell at length on the work of Meillassoux, but rather to think about the “speculative realism” specific to fetishism itself, and its unique contribution to speculative philosophy.

scholarly journals Vital New Matters: The Speculative Turn in the Study of Religion and Gender

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Reid-Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Current State ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Critical Turn ◽  
Object Oriented Ontology

This article provides an introduction to a new trend in continental philosophy, the turn toward metaphysics, realism and speculative philosophy. This stands in sharp contrast with the antirealist and correlationist traditions that have held sway since Kant’s Copernican Revolution in 1781. It is claimed that the study of religion and gender has been shaped by the antirealist legacy of Kant, but there are good reasons for taking account of the new ‘speculative turn’. Two examples from the leading exponent of this turn, speculative realism, are introduced, and some provisional notes toward applying these to the gender-critical turn in the study of religion are considered. Research notes on the current state of the Goddess movement serve as a test case for the introduction of an object-oriented ontology into religious and gender studies.

The Speculative Hopper: Toward a Geology of a Toxic Absolute

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Vertical Dimension ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Insufficient Reason ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Speculative Thought ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

The paper examines the overall course of the so-called “speculative turn” in contemporary Continental philosophy with regard to the ecology of the Absolute. Following the radical redefinition of the mechanics of speculation that has been proposed by theorists of the speculative turn (especially Quentin Meillassoux) as rejection of the absolute essence of classical metaphysics, the author concentrates on the tension between speculative rejection and the problem of grounds which arises from putting the question this way. By rejecting the Absolute as sufficient reason and therefore undermining the grounds of thought, speculative philosophy expands the field of grounds. The logic of sufficient reason is augmented by insufficient reason, sufficient unreason, and insufficient unreason. This field of grounds encompasses the whole “kinesis” of the speculative turn, including the current attempts to turn away from speculation and move beyond the grounds and absolute relied upon in the “new geophilosophy.” The author notes that the shift from the question of “what?” to the question of “where?” indicates that the new geophilosophy is a “territorial geophilosophy.” Even though it nullifies the problem of grounds, it remains subject to grounds as insufficient reason, and thereby exemplifies the vulgar understanding of speculative thought as mere speculation. At the same time, the speculative turn replaces territorial geophilosophy with a resource-based geophilosophy which is more concerned with the question of “when?”. The author maintains that precisely this kind of questioning forces speculative philosophy both to the edge of the field of the Absolute and to a solution for the problem of rejecting grounds as insufficient unreason, Insufficient unreason unlocks a vertical dimension to strata of the Absolute, through which speculation turns into a trowel that unearths the absolutus and discards the Absolutes.

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