suspended debate

Steven Shaviro and I agree via correspondence that our battle lines are pretty firmly drawn and that not too much progress will be made at present, so there won’t be any further debates about Whitehead here in the near future.

Nonetheless, I thought our exchanges in Claremont and (soon to appear) in The Speculative Turn were of great interest. In fact, my characterization of him (and myself) in Claremont as Poe’s “William Wilson” was meant as a compliment and not just as a joke. Other than the OOO crew with whom I share many presuppositions in common, Steven is perhaps my favorite interlocutor. He keeps his eye on the ball and, even more importantly, almost always calls “heads” whenever I call “tails” without doing it perversely. In other words, we often have the opposite take on the same issue, but seem preoccupied with similar issues, which is an interesting phenomenon.

There’s one other person with whom I have a similar relationship: Quentin Meillassoux. We also tend to call the opposite sides on every coin flip, and here again it is fruitful. I think the Meillassoux book from Edinburgh will be enjoyable to readers in much the same way as the exchange with Steven Shaviro in the anthology.

And by the way, re.press thinks that publication of that volume could be “only days away.”