Ennis’ latest interview

Today it’s Adrian Ivakhiv of the University of Vermont.

A quick response to these words from Ivakhiv:

“I haven’t become familiar enough myself with the ‘speculative realists’ to know exactly what the term means, other than its referring to work that’s speculatively ontological (in the sense that Deleuze’s and Whitehead’s work was) and non-anthropocentric (which can also be said of Deleuze and Whitehead). Perhaps we’ll have to see if ‘OOP’ or ‘SR’ becomes more unified and more specific than that, or if it’s more a kind of wave of interest that’s revitalizing philosophers’ ABILITY to deal with the ‘things of the world’ again, and in new ways. Either way, I’m all for it…”

There’s no chance of Speculative Realism becoming more unified and specific. It was always a pretty wide net, and some of the original members are traveling in almost opposite directions now. I would agree that both Deleuze and Whitehead were speculatively ontological. Whitehead was certainly non-anthropocentric. In Deleuze’s case the latter point is more controversial, but I’m willing to go along with it to some extent. I think the important thing about Deleuze and Whitehead, as well as Latour, is that none of them are really “continental” figures. That’s pretty obvious in Whitehead’s case. The reason I wouldn’t put either Deleuze or Latour (or Bergson, for that matter) in the continental basket is that continental philosophy was always largely determined by Kantian presuppositions, which all of these figures somehow aspire to outflank. That is utterly explicit in the cases of Whitehead and Latour, and in my opinion clear enough in the other two cases, or at least arguably so.

Object-oriented philosophy is a slightly different case. Levi and I really do have a lot in common, though we’re more likely to orbit each other for awhile like binary stars than to formulate a common platform. But the shared ancestor here is Latour. There’s never really been a Latour-inspired wing of continental philosophy, but I think it’s coming.