Dark Chemistry on the differences between me and Levi

HERE.

It’s probably about a year premature to speak of this with any confidence. Levi’s forthcoming The Democracy of Objects (a breakthrough book that everyone will really enjoy), and my own soon-to-be-written Treatise on Objects will brush up against our differences to some extent. But I’ve noticed three possible points of disagreement that come to mind immediately.

1. Levi is more sympathetic to a notion of “the virtual” than I am. Levi’s real objects don’t have qualities, whereas mine do. Among other implications, this makes him even more sympathetic than I am to the models offered by DeLanda and Bhaskar, which I admire but of which I am also critical for placing the real action outside individual entities. That’s precisely what Levi likes about them, however. He’s more approving than I am of a “topological” model of objects. (DeLanda and Bhaskar aren’t the same, but they do make a similar gesture in opposing “actualism.” By contrast, I’m an actualist all the way, and Latour once agreed that he was one too– though he’s shifting his position in recent years. The Latour of 2011 is no longer quite the same philosopher as the Latour we saw up through Pandora’s Hope.)

2. Levi doesn’t have a fourfold model of objects. If I understand it correctly, it’s more like a twofold.

3. Levi’s quicker to grant reality to fictional objects than I am. This follows from his “difference that makes a difference” criterion for reality, whereas for me plenty of things can make a difference without being real, and the converse as well: things can be real without making a difference (“dormant objects,” though Levi says he doesn’t oppose these). I haven’t written in enough detail on this point to engage with Levi about it this soon, but I do have some interesting things to say about it. They may even find their way into my March 10 Amsterdam lecture.

Wait, March 10? That’s coming up too fast!