Foucault’s Outside: Contingency, May-Being, and Revolt

In this paper, I argue for an alternative reading of Michel Foucault as an anti-correlationist thinker. Specifically, I position him as aligned with what philosopher Quentin Meillassoux calls speculative materialism (an offshoot of speculative realism). Given the resurgent and exciting prioritization of speculative ontology over concrete politics among these thinkers, coupled with the need for a revolutionary anti-capitalist political movement, my approach aims to take speculative materialists’ claims regarding access to the in-itself seriously while also devoting attention to their (underdeveloped) political dimension. It is in this latter realm Foucault proves particularly helpful to think alongside. Though Foucault has often and convincingly been portrayed as an anti-universalist, postmodern, and epistemologically-oriented figure, I present him as concerned with the subject’s access to the Outside (the great outdoors, things-in-themselves) as well as the politics of such access. I do so through a study of a wide selection of his works (books, essays, interviews, articles), a comparison between his philosophical position and that of Meillassoux’s, and an expansion upon Foucault’s analysis of Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” in The Order of Things, positing the artwork as a speculative object. I suggest, in short, that Foucault’s concepts of thought, force, and the subject have surprisingly striking similarities to Meillassoux’s absolute contingency and his political subject (the ‘vectoral militant’). We can, then, begin to see a revolutionary politics arising out of what I understand as Foucault’s speculative stance—hopefully providing an opportunity to both (re)consider Foucault and highlight the politics incipient in contemporary explorations into the Outside.

Mathematics in the middle: The relationship between measurement and metamorphic matter

This paper revisits philosophical questions regarding the relationship between mathematics and matter. I briefly present four contrary and contemporary perspectives on the speculative force of mathematics, as a provocation for further discussion on the subject of sciento-metrics. I first consider the ideas of the philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, as a way of setting the stage for various kinds of materialist philosophies of mathematics. I then turn to the ideas of two mathematicians - Fernando Zalamea and Giuseppe Longo - and a computer scientist - Gregory Chaitin - and explore how their discussions of contemporary mathematical practice offer important insight (and twist) regarding the relationship between mathematics and matter.

Metafilosofia depois do correlacionismo: caminhos pela Filosofia do Processo de Whitehead

Este artigo pretende abordar o problema do antropocentrismo como uma pedra fundamental da filosofia moderna, bem como o subsequente diagnóstico do correlacionismo filosófico por Quentin Meillassoux como uma implicação ontológica-epistemológica do antropocentrismo moderno. Munidos destas noções, passaremos a ver como Whitehead pode contribuir com uma metafilosofia que não opera sob as restrições que apresentamos aqui.

Quentin Meillassoux. Realismo especulativo y Narrativas desde la Contingencia.

The objective of this work is to introduce Quentin Meillassoux's 'speculative materialist realism', establishing a critical stance against the metaphysical tradition of the 'absolute' that has prevailed in post-Kantian Western philosophy, based on the need for contingency that he proposes. This implies making a critique of what has been understood as realism, necessity and existing. To do this, key concepts of Meillassoux's philosophy are broken down, exemplifying its influence -and possible presence back in time- on other thinkers and artists in their respective narratives such as Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Nick Land, and Florian Hecker, who delve into issues that generate discomfort, amazement, nihilism and pessimism in contemporary societies, such as probability and prediction in financial markets, the Anthropocene and nature, the conflictive relationship between subject and object, truth and chaos, between other things, subtracting ourselves from the humanist discourse on which the scientific, financial and environmental paradigms of our time rest and which have ended up cracking the identity of man, with capitalist production being the most determining geological factor. Let us to reflect on the following questions. What narratives can give an account of the current condition of the world? What narratives emerge when we stop focusing our attention on man? What habits of thought force us to change the awareness that everything around us is contingent?

Passive nihilism and ontotheology: A reply to Husbands on derivative temporality

Conor Husbands’ defense and expansion of Elena Esposito’s temporality of finance is a much-needed intervention. However, in this response essay, I will show a few of the fundamental weaknesses of Esposito’s project, and by extension will highlight some shortcomings of Husbands’ defense-expansion. The point is not to dismiss either project; the goal is rather to bring attention to certain philosophical presuppositions that ground both, and that enclose each in what Markus Gabriel would call an ontotheological orientation. In short, Esposito and Husbands operate via an orientation that attempts to think ‘the world’ as an all-encompassing domain, despite claims to the contrary. How this occurs will be explained below, paying particular attention to the stakes of thinking from such an ontotheological orientation in and to the world. After first presenting Husbands’ argument, I develop some critiques of Esposito and Husbands via the work of Suhail Malik, Ray Brassier, Elie Ayache, Jon Roffe, and Quentin Meillassoux. I then open the aperture towards emerging trends in philosophy that contest the foundations upon which Esposito’s project is built, in order to suggest more robust readings of finance and society. The work of Sergei Prozorov and Markus Gabriel will be the focus here, but these thinkers merely serve as stand-ins for larger trends in speculative- and neo-realism.

Deconstruction: Speculative Materialism and its Other

Since its inception in the late 2000s, supporters of Quentin Meillassoux tended to oppose the movement he founded, speculative materialism, to Derrida and the Derridean community. The arc of Meillassoux's later publications, however, did not support that opposition, especially when it became clear that he neither dismissed correlationism nor set aside literary concerns. These approaches might not be as incompatible as has been supposed. Still, if any affinity is to be established, a first need is to reassess the core of Meillassoux's argument in After Finitude, which has continued to influence his publications. In this article, I attempt not merely to comment upon Meillassoux's argument, but to justify it from within, and so to demonstrate its logic. Then, using a method of re-reading that will be familiar to many, I will attempt to show how that logic reveals speculative materialism and Derridean concerns to be better treated as logical affiliates. Doing so will not presuppose agreement, but will set the stage for more thorough comparisons in future.

Nueva antropología filosófica. La idea de ser humano en las ontologías de Markus Gabriel y Quentin Meillassoux

En este ensayo planteo la posibilidad de una renovación de la antropología filosófica desde la perspectiva ontológica del nuevo realismo, particularmente desde las teorías filosóficas de Markus Gabriel y Quentin Meillassoux. Previamente expongo la discusión sobre la antropología filosófica que se produjo en el siglo pasado, especialmente las disputas entre Ernst Cassirer y Martin Heidegger y entre Heidegger y Jean-Paul Sartre. Doy cuenta también de las líneas principales de la corriente filosófica del “nuevo realismo”. Concluyo con la propuesta de una redefinición ontológica de ser humano, apuntando a la idea de un nuevo humanismo.

Feminismo especulativo nas veredas pós-correlacionistas

RESUMO:Este trabalho discute novas possibilidades do feminismo no movimento filosófico denominado realismo especulativo, na vertente de Quentin Meillassoux, de forma a oxigenar a epistemologia feminista contemporânea, que se encontra em clausura metafísica. Se, pré-Kant, o feminismo se encontrava enclausurado na postura objetivista, com a essencialização da mulher como imperfeita, por outro lado, pós-Kant, a mulher se encontra reduzida à verdade subjetivista da ordem epistêmica, gerando outras essencializações. O artigo propõe nova visão para se pensar o feminismo póscorrelacionista, com a ascensão de outra forma de reflexão ontológica: através da cosmontologia, uma compreensão do sexo, do gênero e da sexualidade nem melhor e nem pior, mas apenas diferente, que provoca a reontologização das ciências humanas pelo reconhecimento de outras grafias e modos de existência.

Speculation

Speculation does not refer to anything like a unified school of literary criticism; nor is it one of the terms commonly employed by critics. Nonetheless, there have already been at least two important appeals to speculation in early 21st-century philosophical approaches to literature. One of them is speculative realism, including the variant of this school propounded by Quentin Meillassoux and known as speculative materialism. Another is Tom Eyers’s speculative formalism, as developed in his book of the same title. Whereas Meillassoux is concerned with the mathematizability of literary texts, Eyers is focused on moments of self-reflexive paradox.

Más allá del ateísmo, la religión y el nihilismo. La “irreligión” filosófica de Quentin Meillassoux

En el artículo se explica y se aboga a favor de la propuesta de Quentin Meillassoux de “filosofía irreligiosa” o “irreligión filosófica”, es decir, de una tercera postura entre religión y ateísmo que plantea la concepción de un Dios inexistente y por venir (Dios virtual) y de una recuperación ético-filosófica de las nociones de esperanza, iortalidad, justicia y divinidad. Con referencias a distintos pensadores de la historia de la filosofía se busca enmarcar el significado y valor de la concepción de Meillassoux. Después de una exposición breve de la filosofía del pensador francés, se realiza en sucesivos apartados la recuperación crítico-filosófica de conceptos religiosos básicos para concluir con una breve exposición de la refutación del “nihilismo” que hace Meillassoux, tarea filosófica importante como ninguna en nuestro tiempo.