This weekend the SLSA Conference is taking place in Atlanta, and a few things of interest to those of you who follow speculative realism are going on.
For starters, I presented my keynote yesterday, on alien phenomenology. In general, the audience seemed still unfamiliar with SR and OOO, but also very curious. I took a number of useful new thoughts away from the Q&A session too, which was quite lively, usually a good sign. Graham mentions that he’s also started using “ontography” in his forthcoming L’Object Quadruple, although in a different way. I’ll look forward to reading more about this.
Next, as in previous years, there’s a whole series of sessions on Whitehead. Titles and can be found on the SLSA site, but you’ll have to search/scan for “Whitehead.” The focus of this year’s sessions are Whitehead and Cosmopolitics, although some of the talks seem to diverge a bit from that theme. SLSA doesn’t have online proceedings, so if you’re interested in more you’ll have to contact the authors directly.
Among those, I heard Steven Shaviro’s talk on Whitehead and Harman. It was quite interesting and careful, although I’ll really have to go back and read the article before I can form solid opinions (it will appear in the forthcoming Speculative Turn, along with Harman’s response. You can already find some hints of both on their respective blogs (Shaviro, Harman). If I had to give a one-sentence response to Shaviro, I’d say that where he sees isolationism in Harman’s theory of objects, I see an invitation to diversity.
Finally, since I was preparing for SLSA for much of the week I’m behind catching up with other readings from the speculative blogosphere. Levi’s got an interesting piece up about mereology that I want to return to soon. Oh, and for those of you who use the RSS feed from my speculative realism aggregator, it broke on Wednesday and I finally got it working again this morning.
Comments
c2588
You would like Shaviro’s writing, you were both trained in deconstruction and now quite over it. His work takes a more broad look at culture, technology, media, where you are more concentrated. You are both philosophical, he is probably a bit more deeply dug into it.
It is funny you should meet in the context of SR, and I attribute this entirely to Levi Bryant’s Larval Subjects blog, though that’s just how I’ve seen this all go down. Larval Subjects used to be a Lacanian-Deleuzean synthesis, and then got into this SR stuff which was very happy to have you join on board.
Tada, my history of the internet.
Ian Bogost
Yes, I like Shaviro’s writing, and you should stay tuned for more on stuff Shaviro, Bryant, Harman, and myself are doing in the near future… actually, I connected with Shaviro’s work first through his work on Whitehead, I think, rather than his work on film.
Levi
I’m gratified to see my blog attributed such powers of connection, but really its Graham that deserves the credit here. Graham brought Ian and I together in a nocturnal sort of way through the backchannels of email. Harman’s a terrific “sensuous vicar” that way. One of these days Ian and I will have to get to work and write a book together. If he’s so inclined, of course. I’m just a young upstart afterall that’s not half as accomplished as these two guys. Nonetheless I think we both bring a lot of complementary and shared influences to the table for such a work. I figure that such a work would either deal with a lot of the nonhuman/content intersections that have preoccupied both Ian and I, trying to think the intersection of what I call the semiotic (content) and the technological and the role of other nonhuman actors (as a rejoinder to charges of “technological determinism’). Such a work would be about something like “meta-semiotics” both critiquing forms of analysis that focus almost exclusively on the technology as well as semiotic approaches that focus almost exclusively on content, ignoring the manner in which media, broadly construed, constrain and afford certain forms of content. Alternatively– or perhaps in the same breath/text –OOO needs a well developed political theory. I think the two of us are well situated to develop that. Anyway, yes, I’m absolutely delighted to have crossed paths with Ian as his work is exactly what I’ve needed to supplement my own background. And Ian, you’re under no obligation to publish this post if you’d prefer to keep all this stuff under wraps.