tomorrow night’s discussion between me and Tristan Garcia will be transcribed

Or so I was told last night. It will be available in printed form within the next few months.

By the way, we’re speaking from 10:15-11:15, which will surely be the latest start time in my career. (The many-lectures format of the Drift festival means that there are always some that start ultra-late.)

I was supposed to speak at Drift in 2010, but my flight to Amsterdam was cancelled due to the volcano in Iceland. This one is a make-up, 3 years later.

February 21, 2014 in Annapolis

This January I gave the Friday lecture at the Santa Fe, New Mexico campus of St. John’s College, my undergraduate alma mater. Now I’m set to speak at the Annapolis campus as well, the one from which I graduated (having done freshman year in Santa Fe).

The title/topic will be announced soon. All of the scheduling puzzle pieces for my February 2014 visit to the United States will come together soon. If interested, you can check the “Coming Appearances” option above for details.

debate with architectural theorists in London

Thanks to The Architectural Exchange, which plans to repeat this event with other philosophers in future years. All of these events will be held at THE SWEDENBORG SOCIETY in Bloomsbury. The speakers will speak about me in three waves, and then I arrive on June 22 to face them all in person. (An official poster will be ready next week.)

 

Wednesday, May 1st: (Swedenborg Society, Doors open 6:30pm, lecture begins 7pm)

•Peg Rawes:  “Nonhuman Architectural Ecologies”

•Patrick Lynch: “The Resistance of Things”

 

Wednesday, May 15th (Swedenborg Society, Doors open 6:30pm, lecture begins 7pm)

•Jonathan Hale “Coping without noticing?: Buildings as Tool-Beings”

•Adam Sharr “A House with one Wall”

 

Thursday, May 30th (Swedenborg Society, Doors open 6:30pm, lecture begins 7pm)

•Lorens Holm “Architecture and Its Objects”

•Peter Carl: “A Punkt in Spice”

 

Saturday, June 22nd (Swedenborg Society, Doors open 5:00pm, lecture begins 5:30pm)

•Graham Harman “What Objects Mean for Architecture”

+ debate with Peg Rawes, Patrick Lynch, Jonathan Hale, Adam Sharr, Lorens Holm, and Peter Carl

Emanuel Rutten in his own words

Click HERE. His opening statement is in Dutch but the remarks he made last night are posted in English.

It is Rutten’s attempt to argue for his “strong correlationist” position vis-à-vis the status of an extra-mental real world. Nor am I simply imposing Meillassouxian terminology on Rutten here: he explicitly endorses Meillassoux’s terminology (so he told me last night).

As readers of my Meillassoux book for Edinburgh will recall, I happen to think that strong correlationism is an impossible position, one that slides immediately into idealism. (And insofar as Meillassoux’s own position is a radicalization of strong correlationism, I argued in the book that Meillassoux’s position is logically untenable, for all its lucidity and brilliance.)

Rutten didn’t change my mind last night, nor did I change his. But he was a wonderfully upbeat and open-minded conversation partner, very enthusiastic about philosophy. Some people make it feel like they’ve sucked your blood after you talk to them. Rutten is the opposite phenomenon– someone who puts you in a better mood, because of his openness and sense of fair play.

a further thought on the previous post

Why do we put up with outrageous charges such as 33 Euros for an article? Why do we continue to submit our work to such journals, which largely exclude readership lacking in institutional library affiliations? (Even as a Professor at the American University in Cairo, I’ve often had to ask friends at top-tier Western universities to fetch articles for me in a hurry, since our interlibrary loan system for articles is pretty fast, but certainly not a same-day service.)

Well, in the case of “Asymmetrical Causation” I was invited to contribute, and I happen to like the editor, so I agreed.

However, most of what drives our willingness to put up with ridiculous copyright agreements and often ridiculous wait times is that academic tenure and promotion is a system that heavily weights “elite” journals. And those companies that are shrewd enough to buy up elite journals therefore have a lot of leverage in forcing us to endure the ridiculous.

33 Euros for an article?

HERE is the download page for my article “Asymmetrical Causation.” I do not recommend that you download it, because they’re charging 33 Euros.

I’m sorry, but 33 Euros is ridiculous. Yes, there must be sound economical calculations behind that price, based on their need not to undermine the bulk subscription packages of all their journals that they sell to libraries (many of which are funded by the public, of course).

However, any system that leads to a 33 Euro charge for a single article is, ipso facto, a preposterous, indefensible, and insulting system that has no right to continue to exist. Let’s get rid of it.