scholarly journals Speculative Realism in the Context of Contemporary Philosophical Thought

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (0) ◽  
pp. 68-80
Author(s):  
Vasyl Korchevnyi
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Speculative Realism

A Politics of Intensity: Some Aspects of Acceleration in Simondon and Deleuze

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-517
Author(s):  
Yuk Hui ◽  
Louis Morelle
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
The Other ◽  
Generic Concept ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Ontological Ground ◽  
Shed Light

This article aims to clarify the question of speed and intensity in the thoughts of Simondon and Deleuze, in order to shed light on the recent debates regarding accelerationism and its politics. Instead of starting with speed, we propose to look into the notion of intensity and how it serves as a new ontological ground in Simondon's and Deleuze's philosophy and politics. Simondon mobilises the concept of intensity to criticise hylomorphism and substantialism; Deleuze, taking up Simondon's conceptual framework, repurposes it for his ontology of difference, elevating intensity to the rank of generic concept of being, thus bypassing notions of negativity and individuals as base, in favour of the productive and universal character of difference. In Deleuze, the correlation between intensity and speed is fraught with ambiguities, with each term threatening to subsume the other; this rampant tension becomes explicitly antagonistic when taken up by the diverse strands of contemporary accelerationism, resulting in two extreme cases in the posthuman discourse: either a pure becoming, achieved through destruction, or through abstraction that does away with intensity altogether; or an intensity without movement or speed, that remains a pure jouissance. Both cases appear to stumble over the problem of individuation, if not disindividuation. Hence, we wish to raise the following question: in what way can one think of an accelerationist politics with intensity, or an intensive politics without the fetishisation of speed? We consider this question central to the interrogation of the limits of acceleration and posthuman discourse, thus requiring a new philosophical thought on intensity and speed.

Speculative Realism and Science Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Willems
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.

Gender Philosophy of V.V. Rozanov versus Aesthetic Anthropology of I.A. Efremov: Comparative Aspect

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 285-292
Author(s):  
Yulia Chernyakhovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Period ◽  
New Era ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Comparative Aspect ◽  
Russian Intelligentsia ◽  
Spiritual Conflicts

This year is the centenary of the death of the Russian publicist and religious thinker V.V. Rozanov. And this year also follows the year of the 110th anniversary of the great Soviet writer, philosopher and futurist I.A. Efremov. The first figure ended the era, gathering and absorbing all the rushing about, as well as political and spiritual conflicts of the Russian intelligentsia in the time of the outgoing monarchy. The latter was born at the beginning of the new era and proclaimed the images of the great future. It’s an interesting question whether they, like the images of their corresponding eras, differ immensely, and we could say that they are split and unrelated. Or if the images of the later epoch are the continuation of the former ones, overcoming the deadlocks of the old era and solving its conflicts. Did the intellectuals of the Soviet era discard the problems of the tsarist intellectuals or, on the contrary, did they manage to offer advanced answers? The philosophy of V.V. Rozanov, so original and not fully explored to this day, could not but be reflected in the works of his successors and heirs. Revealing similar trends of philosophical thought in the legacy of the Soviet period, the author of the article comes to the conclusion that a number of analogous issues were investigated also by I. A. Efremov.

The Facticity of Things – Reframing Slotawa's Practice with Meillassoux and Harman

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Robert Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Given

Robert Jackson examines the work of the German artist Florian Slotawa. Beginning with his first works, “Hotelarbeiten”, Slotawa recomposes and reconfigures the order of ordinary objects – in this case, the furniture of hotel rooms. In reconstructing these rooms in another order without altering these objects in any way, photographing them, and then subsequently restoring them to their previous configuration, the artist reveals the ordinary function of the objects and by withdrawing from their function shows their material and factual character. To elucidate the specificity of Slotawa’s intervention, Jackson critiques Heidegger’s conception of facticity in its exclusive account of Dasein and its being-in-the world, in contrast to the factuality of “things-within-the world.” Drawing on Harman’s extension of finitude beyond Dasein to all things, he encourages us to see Slotawa as engaged in “facticity of things” that is characterized by dispossession, lack of reason, and radical contingency. As Jackson argues, Slotawa is trying to find a way to dwell in a world that has no room or possibility for the given coordinates of dwelling; a world that is a fact without reason. In concluding he explores a reading of Slotawa that explores the intersecting yet radically different approaches to thinking about a speculative realism in the work of Harman and Meillassoux, and their differing attitudes to the finite and the infinite, facticity and factiality, contingency and necessity, without presuming to assume that either of these accounts cover the speculative facticity of things revealed in Slotawa’s work.

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