brief response to Jackson’s recent post

Rob Jackson has a post ABOUT UCLA here.

He’s right that Badiouianism seemed to be the main source of opposition to OOO in the room, but I view that more positively than Jackson does (if he knew the people in question, so would he).

The main Badiouian objections were coming from Nathan Brown (UC-Davis), organizer Ken Reinhard (UCLA), and Daniel Sacilotto (UCLA), who are all extremely bright people who simply happen to be more favorable toward Badiouian ontology than I am.

They also have a good point: there hasn’t been an OOO response to the theory of objects in Logics of Worlds yet. That’s simply an accidental result of the fact that I haven’t yet found a window of time yet in which to do it. But it’s a top priority for 2011, and I plead guilty to not having done it much earlier. It would be an extremely interesting debate, I think.

But before people are too quick to hold me to blame for that, please note that Badiou also doesn’t do a very thorough job of dealing with rival theories of objects. He simply says he thinks he has a new and original theory compared to the old conservative ones, but then gives no account of those old conservative ones. He doesn’t mention Husserl’s theory of intentional objects and I don’t recall any detailed account of Aristotelian primary substance, and I would be shocked if Badiou had any familiarity at all with the Austrian tradition on objects other than Husserl.

So, all I ask is that I not be held to a stricter schedule of interchange than Badiou himself.

an intriguing event in the works

Some months after Edinburgh publishes my book on Meillassoux, a particular American university wants to host a public debate between us about the book, and at least one other stellar panelist may be involved, and possibly two other stellar panelists. If it all comes together it could be one of the fun events of the decade. Spring 2012 seems to be the likely time frame.

Meillassoux has enthusiastically agreed, so now it’s just a matter of the university in question nailing down the logistics. I’ll post the information whenever the event is a definite go, but am as excited by this as by any other lecture gig I’ve ever had.

conference updates will continue in principle

A number of readers have asked me to continue the conference updates. I will do so unless: (a) participants start seeming annoyed by it, or (b) my laptop battery runs out and I find no outlet near my seat. The latter is important, since all the speakers have assigned seats with name cards in UN-like fashion (it’s a well-organzied conference).

I should also have said that Roland Faber began the conference with some interesting announcements. The most interesting to many readers of this blog will be the fact that the Whitehead family (the literary executor is a grandson living in the USA) has given the people in Claremont the right to start working on a critical edition of everything written by Whitehead, including all the books still in print. Faber estimated 25 years as the time frame for the critical edition to be completed, but even if it takes 50 years, we’ll all start seeing the fruits much sooner than that.

I’d previously met Faber in Norway two years ago. Great guy, though we have a big disagreement about whether he was hearing a flashy, stylish hat in Stavanger or not. He agrees with me that he was smoking a cigar, but insists that the hat is impossible since he doesn’t even own one. But I’m sticking to my story: I clearly remember Faber in a broad-brimmed brown hat in Stavanger. It’s more likely that I’m wrong than that he is, of course, but the memory is so extremely vivid for some reason. It wasn’t that long ago: just a day or two after Obama was elected.

question period: Stengers and Haraway on speculative realism

7:40 Stengers. Relevance is more important than novelty.

7:43 Nathan Brown from audience. You both used the term speculative realism in your talks. Speculative realism is generally thought of as a critique of correlationism and a possibility of thinking the absolute, which may be taken as incompatible with the situated knowledges that you both recommend. So, how can there be a situated objectivity, when these two words may seem in conflict?

7:45 Stengers. Latour and I both think that objectivity and situatedness are inseparable. Objectivity is produced, and it is more interesting the more it is produced. Objectivity is not a philosophical theme. Objectivity is always a “matter of concern.”

7:46. Haraway. Agrees with Latour that nothing should be allowed to explain anything else away. And certain forms of correlationism make precisely this error. [Haraway has clearly read Meillassoux.] Speculative realism is a term I’m still learning to use in a sentence, as if in a school assignment. Speculative realism is the new kid on the block that has adopted a label for itself, which may sound mean, but all kinds of interesting things are going on under that label and so she may want to live on the block. Not enough girls in speculative realism which makes her mad, but she’s still curious and seduced by it. [Note: Girls welcome!!!]

7:49. Haraway. Objectivity is a precious achievement. The last thing we need is some sort of anti-science feminism.

7:51. Haraway. Speculative realism is also an invitation, and that’s good.

7:52. Stengers. Curious about speculative realism. But is it still stuck in the “Can we know?” tradition of Kant? Is it accepting Kant and then trying to escape it? She prefers: “What do we know?”

8:01. Stengers. Neo-pagan witches are important, and she discusses them with her philosophy students.

8:04. Levi Bryant. Wants to challenge the notion that speculative realism wants to think the absolute, which merely invites a nature/culture distinction rather than a more Latourian position. Haraway and Stengers have both inspired Levi’s work. Excess of objects beyond knowledge, versus the scientistic versions of speculative realism. Haraway agrees.

Overall, Haraway a bit more condescending than necessary about speculative realism (most of us really like her stuff), but she does sound interested. Glad Nathan forced the issue with his question.

Donna Haraway response to Stengers

7:20. “The openness or dare of what has been called speculative realism.” Wow. SR is really in the lexicon now.

7:22. Whitehead’s organism is not an organism in the traditional/romantic sense. It’s not a big organic whole, but an infection between numerous disconnected parts.

7:22. The patience of Earth is at an end when it comes to human ways. We should respond not with fear, but with some sort of new trust.

7:24. Maybe novelty isn’t what we’re looking for, even though I (Haraway) love process philosophy, appreciate the fact that 90% of our bodies are not human cells, that we are infected with the alien, etc.

7:25. The abstractions of process philosophy may need some tinkering.

7:25. Dingoes are the charismatic macro-fauna of the Australian state [nice phrase!], yet an effort is being made to exterminate them.

7:30. Our time is a great time of genocides.

7:30. Christians who want to address global warming with something called “creation care”, and the scientists who sneer at them. Haraway seems not fond of either group.

7:32. We now have technical-biological capabilities to generate new organisms without hetero-normativity, in ways that queer theory has never even dreamed of.

7:33. No carping, critical, scolding, postcolonial multiculturalism will help us anymore. [Hear, hear.] (Haraway gets on rhetorical micro-rolls like this quite often.)

7:34. Isabelle Stengers has learned a great deal form the abstractions of the neo-pagan witches.

7:35. Let’s make Heidegger not so poor in world. (*laughing*)

7:36. Owning up to knowing something is the only way to be a serious person. [Great line.]

My first time seeing Haraway. General impression: forceful and impressive, no surprise she’s a star. Would like to have her as a department colleague.

Stengers keynote in progress

Roland Faber with a polished, professional, and friendly introduction to the conference as a whole.

Isabelle Stengers:

6:52 PM (PST). Whitehead as heir of William James, giving a rigid consistency to James’s loose explorations of experience.

6:54. “Whitehead commits himself to a speculative realism” (!) I don’t think she meant us; just a verbal similarity.

6:55. “As a speculative realist, Whitehead…”

6:57. Speaking of reality apart from its relevance to us is an abstraction.

7:00. Only societies endure in Whitehead, and both societies and endurance are derivative of the perishing actual occasions. Critics are right to point this out.

7:05. Endurance is an achievement, not a given inertia. Citation made of Karen Barad.

7:05. Donna Haraway looking very intense, anticipating her forthcoming response to Stengers.

7:06. To be real is not to be self-sustaining.

7:07. Addressing something as real is a matter of speculative concern. (Shades of Latour, but maybe he took it from Stengers.)

7:08. When Whitehead made actual occasions the only res vera (in the Cartesian sense) he took a daring jump.

7:08. Introducing societies as that which endures takes Whitehead away from biological models (which view endurance as a matter of wonder) to the social and historical sciences (which always deal with somewhat enduring institutions)

7:11. In praise of Latour’s Irreductions. Nothing can be given the inherent privilege of serving as the explanation for anything else.

7:14. People who put rabbits in hats and then try to amaze us by pulling them out. Not sure whom she’s referring to with this, but it’s always a nice image.

This is a kinder, gentler Stengers these days. Traditionally she was one of the most ferocious of continental philosophers, but the last two times I’ve seen her, including tonight, she’s been a sweetheart.