“has somehow chosen the excerpts maliciously”

Just saw this in Adam Kotsko’s review of Meillassoux’s book on Mallarmé (though he’s referring here to my translation of excerpts of L’Inexistence divine):

“Given that his breakthrough philosophical work seemed to most readers to represent a particularly radical form of atheism, this embrace of the resurrection of the dead is, to say the least, off-putting. Admirers of Meillassoux have generally reacted negatively to this particular aspect of his work, viewing it as crazy and embarrassing. Some have even hypothesized that Harman has somehow chosen the excerpts maliciously in order to discredit him.”

Goodness, what spiteful and low-minded speculation. That’s the first I’d heard of it.

But to Kotsko’s credit (and we’ve had our differences), he answers it nobly as concerns my own role in the project, and insightfully as to the probable reasons for such speculation:

“This scenario that is basically impossible, given Harman’s great admiration for Meillassoux and Meillassoux’s own collaboration on Harman’s book, but the fact that it would occur to them shows the sense of betrayal and even trauma this part of Meillassoux’s thought has prompted.”

A few thoughts:

1. Meillassoux did participate in the project. It took a bit of effort to persuade him to go along with letting me translate excerpts from L’Inexistence divine, but my take on that is that Meillassoux is generally a perfectionist who doesn’t like releasing works to the public unless they are in ultra-fine condition. Levi Bryant insightfully compared Meillassoux to a “gem cutter.”

2. There is no possible way to translate excerpts from L’Inexistence divine without selecting the excerpts about justice, God, resurrection, and the Christ-like mediator. Those concepts are the climax of the entire book. I worked hard to make a judicious selection. If you’re curious about what I edited out, I’ve already explained that I dropped almost everything that Meillassoux said in the book about the history of philosophy, much of it fascinating. Could we simply have translated the whole thing? No. Meillassoux didn’t want the whole book published. In fact, I may have pushed the envelope a bit as to how much quantity he was willing to have published. But that was as short as I could make it while basically preserving the spirit of the book. [ADDENDUM: The reason he didn’t want the whole thing translated and published –and believe me, we tried multiple times to persuade him– is because he’s no longer satisfied with the 2003 version of the project, the one from which the excerpts come. He’s in the midst of a mutli-volume reworking of the entire project, and that’s the only version he wants published in full.]

3. Meillassoux saw the excerpts prior to publications and had no complaints. I had the sense that he liked the selection. But in any case, he made no attempt to alter the choices I had made.

4. The theory of the virtual God, and everything connected with it, is not some discredited piece of Meillassoux juvenlia that he might wish to hide in a box in the attic. He is quite proud of it, will be publishing a full-blown systematic version of it, and is rather skilled at defending it. I think Kotsko is right that these themes have simply been a bit traumatic for the more “textbook materialists” among Meillassoux’s readers. You have to give Meillassoux credit for bravery here. He was born and raised and still works in a heavily atheist/materialist context, and he’s taking a big risk in proferring a theory that certain of his natural allies are likely to find supremely implausible. So it goes in philosophy. Say what you really believe, and let the chips fall where they may.

5. And yes, I do have a great admiration for Meillassoux, and like him a great deal personally as well. Friendship and collegiality are not incompatible with a certain level of dispute and occasional irritation– I haven’t liked everything he’s written about me, and the reverse no doubt holds as well. Speculative materialism and object-oriented philosophy are so radically incompatible that I can’t borrow much from him beyond the initial critique of correlationism. But Meillassoux’s effect on continental philosophy has been precious, and he was able to pull it off initially with just one short but sublimely engineered book. I just reread it in preparation for the Bonn Summer School, and it’s a marvel. You keep finding new things in it on each rereading.