More than 15 years have passed since the speculative realism
conference at Goldsmiths College, London, hosted Ray Brassier, Iain
Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux. Their dictum
was simple: Reality is not what it seems. 15 Years of Speculative
Realism begins with four chapters, each dedicated to the work of a
speculative realism panellist. On one level, their respective projects
engaged with the great philosophical systems of yesteryear: Cartesian
dualism; the Platonist distinction between reality and appearance; and
the Kantian revival of noumena. But there is much more at stake here,
such as the repositioning of the subject as yet another object in the
universe, and the radically egalitarian view that individual human
thought is best described as a local manifestation of nature. Through
these observations, we are also encouraged to ask: 'Could the laws of
physics change at any moment?' and 'How does thought think the
gradual extinction of itself as but another perishable phenomenon in
the physical universe?' Two further chapters offer wider context: the
Analysis & Impact chapter evaluates speculative realism's relevance to
the wider domain of philosophy, as well as its achievements and
shortcomings, with commentary by Slavoj Žižek, and the Interviews
chapter has contributions from Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, and
Goldsmiths College's speculative realism conference coordinator,
Alberto Toscano. As we prophetically enter into a new epoch
- characterized by artificial intelligence and a withering climate
- we call the Anthropocene, it seems that many of the insights
offered to us through the speculative realist lens have come to
fruition. The objective, now, is to speculate upon how far this major
shift in the humanities will ensue, and how different this reality
will be from our preconceived notion of the real offered to us by
previous tenets of realism. This book charts the essential meaning of
the movement in the wake of its spell as one of the most significant
philosophical movements of the twenty-first century.
Les mer
2007–2022
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781803414652
Publisert
2024
Utgiver
National Book Network
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter