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.