CFP: Ontological Anarché: Beyond Materialism and Idealism

CFP: Ontological Anarché: Beyond Materialism and Idealism
A Special Issue of Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies

Edited by Jason Adams and Duane Rousselle

www.anarchist-developments.org

Radical theory has always been beset by the question of ontology, albeit to varying degrees and under differing conditions. In recent years, in particular, political metaphysics has returned with force: the rise of Deleuze-influenced “new materalism”, along with post-/non-Deleuzean speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, all bear testament to this. In this same period, anarchism has returned as a major influence on social movements and critical scholarship alike. What then, are some of the potential resonances between these currents, particularly given that anarchism has so often been understood/misunderstood as a fundamentally idealist philosophy?

Is it the case, as Marx famously held in The German Ideology and The Poverty of Philosophy, that anarchism fails to account for the full complexity of the ontological? Is there a lack of concern for instance, with the actual circumstances that would make social transformation possible? Is anarchism a theory for which materiality is “distorted in the imagination of the egoist”, inevitably producing a subject “for whom everything occurs in the imagination?” Should “Sancho” (Max Stirner), for instance, have “descended from the realm of speculation into the realm of reality”?

Or is the opposition of materialism and idealism itself a barrier to a higher, more powerful convergence, as recent anarchist/anarchistic thinkers from Hakim Bey to Reiner Schürmann have argued? This special issue of Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies considers these questions in dialogue with new materialism, speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, in order to seek new points of departure. We are interested in papers that open up a space for these and other questions to be pursued.

Papers need not be tied to any particular tradition of thought (i.e., post-anarchism, speculative realism, or the anarchist tradition). We welcome creative, speculative, provocative, and risky para-academic research. If your current research relates to these topics, we encourage you to submit a proposal or a paper. We also welcome multi-media contributions.

Articles may be of varying length, submitted to Jason Adams: jason.adams@williams.edu, cc to Duane.Rousselle@egs.edu

The deadline for final submission is October 1st, 2012.

Laruelle and Non-Philosophy for £4.99

I don’t know if Amazon has chosen us as the book of the month or something, and I am sure the price will jump up in the next few days, but you can pre-order Laruelle and Non-Philosophy for £4.99 right now on amazon.co.uk.

Levi Bryant talk at Independent Colleges Dublin

Independent Colleges Dublin presents Professor Levi R. Bryant (Collin College, Texas, USA) ‘Two Ontologies: Posthumanism and Lacan’s Graph of Sexuation’ With responses from Paul J. Ennis and Michael O’Rourke 2pm-4pm, Tuesday July 3 2012, Independent Colleges Dublin, 60-63 Dawson Street, Dublin 2 http://www.independentcolleges.ie/faculty-of-arts/profiles Abstract:  Initially it would seem that Lacan and posthumanism make uncomfortable bedfellows. Posthumanism rejects the centrality of the human within being, treating humans as beings among other beings, and seeks to recognize the autonomy and contributions of nonhumans to social formations rather than focusing on beliefs, norms, signs, signifiers, and ideologies alone. In his focus on language and the symbolic, Lacan seem starkly opposed to such an orientation, instead treating the world as an effect of the signifier (which is a “human” formation). Indeed, in Seminar XX, Lacan says that “the universe is the flower of rhetoric”, implying that beings are products or effects of signifying systems. However, while Lacan himself does not seem to advocate a posthumanism, closer scrutiny of his thought offers powerful resources for thinking the posthuman and queer. Unlike postmoderns and some post-structuralists– for example Baudrillard in his System of Objects –Lacan is not so much a thinker of how the signifier and symbolic structure reality as he is a thinker of the limits and constitutive incompleteness of the symbolic and the illusory attempts to cover over this incompleteness. This becomes apparent above all in Lacan’s graph of sexuation, where the two “sexuated” positions outline formal deadlocks that emerge when the symbolic order tries to totalize itself without remainder. Far from advocating the sovereignty of the signifier in constructing the universe, Lacan’s Goedelian structuralism endlessly shows the impotence and incompleteness of the signifier. Under this reading, the masculine side of the graph of sexuation turns out to be the side of semblance that strives to cover over the gaps and inconsistencies of the symbolic through a transcendent supplement. By contrast, the feminine side of the graph of sexuation becomes the side of truth, marking the limits of language and signification and opening on to entities which are beyond the realm of language and culture. An ontology cognizant of the way suggested by the formal deadlocks discovered by Lacan points the way to a posthumanism capable of opening on to nonhumans and that no longer places humans at the center of being but rather treats them as beings among other beings. Biographies of participants: Levi R. Bryant is a professor of philosophy at Collin College and a former psychoanalyst. He is the author of The Democracy of Objects, Difference and Givenness, and co-editor, with Graham Harman and Nick Srnicek of The Speculative Turn. He has written numerous articles on Lacan, Žižek, Badiou, Deleuze, and object-oriented ontology. He currently lives outside of Dallas, Texas. Paul J. Ennis completed his PhD in Philosophy at University College, Dublin. His recent publications include Continental Realism (Zero Books, 2011), and ‘The Transcendental Core of Correlationism,’ Cosmos and History (2011). He is an associate editor at the journal Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism. Michael O’Rourke lectures in the School of Psychotherapy at Independent Colleges, Dublin, Ireland and works mostly at the intersections between Queer Theory and continental philosophy. Some of his many publications can be found here: http://independentcolleges.academia.edu/MichaelORourke Schedule:  2.00-2.05 Opening Remarks  2.05-2.50 Levi R. Bryant, “Two Ontologies: Posthumanism and Lacan’s Graph of Sexuation” 2.50-3.00 Response from Paul J. Ennis  3.00-3.10 Response from Michael O’Rourke 3.10-4.00 Discussion with Levi R. Bryant  Reading: In advance of the seminar delegates should read Part 6, “The Four Theses of Flat Ontology”  of Levi Bryan’ts open access book The Democracy of Objects (Open Humanities Press, 2011). The book is available to download as a pdf file here:  http://openhumanitiespress.org/Bryant_2011_The%20Democracy%20of%20Objects.pdf  The html version of the book can be accessed here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ohp%3Bidno%3D9750134.0001.001 Registration: To reserve a place please email Michael O’Rourke (tranquilised_icon@yahoo.com). A registration fee of E10 is payable on the day of the seminar.

Meillassoux in New York

Quentin Meillassoux will be giving a lecture this Sunday in New York entitled “The Coup de dés, or the Materialist Divinization of the Hypothesis” to celebrate the launch of the English translation of The Number and the Siren. The location of the lecture is 88 Eldridge Street, 4th floor (just below Grand Street) and begins, again, this Sunday, May 6 at 7pm. Download the flyer [PDF] for more information. The book, translated by Robin Mackay is now available to be purchased from Urbanomic/Sequence Press. I’ll be posting a review of the text here within the next few weeks, but can already tell you the book will be of great interest to those who were challenged by After Finitude as well as those who have perhaps mourned the passing of philosophical engagement in the avant garde.

Laruelle in London

François Laruelle Public Lecture May 9th, 2012, London

Professor François Laruelle will give a public lecture entitled, ‘Towards a Philosophy Deemed “Contemporary”‘, on May 9th 2012.

This will take place as an evening lecture 6-8pm, on May 9th in Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. The event is open to members of the public (no reservation required, but do come early to get a seat).

Professor Laruelle has taught at both the University of Paris X and the Collège international de philosophie, and is a Visiting Professor at the London Graduate School, Kingston University, London. He is the author of over twenty books, including Les philosophies de la différence (1986), Principes de la non-philosophie (1996), Le Christ futur (2002), and, most recently, Le Concept de non-photographie and Anti-Badiou (both 2011) – all of which have either just appeared or will soon appear in English translation. A number of essay collections on Laruelle will also appear this year.

This talk is part of the ‘Laruelle in London’ series of workshops and lectures organised each semester by the London Graduate School, Kingston University. The purpose of this series is both to cover the conceptual background to Non-Standard Philosophy and to explore its consequences throughout the arts, sciences, and humanities.

For further information email Professor John Mullarkey: j.mullarkey@kingston.ac.uk

“Theorems on the Good News”

Alexander R. Galloway has prepared a translation of one of Laruelle’s shorter, aphoristic texts entitled “Theorems on the Good News” [warning pdf]. I’ll be using this for the Laruelle eSeminar when we talk about religion, but for those who don’t want to delve into very long pieces, perhaps this short, if enigmatic, text will be of interest.

Matter Matters: The Social Sciences Beyond the Linguistic Turn

Excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at this symposium on 15-16 October, 2012. Also a reminder that the Millennium conference’s call for papers is over in a week. Be sure to submit an abstract soon if you’d like to participate.

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Invitation to a Symposium,
Faculty of the Social Sciences, Lund University, October 15-16, 2012

Matter Matters: The Social Sciences Beyond the Linguistic Turn

Keynote speakers
Diana Coole, University of London
Samantha Frost, University of Illinois
Graham Harman, American University in Cairo
Hans Ruin, Södertörn University College
Nick Srnicek, London School of Economics

According to the main mantra of the linguistic turn, sociopolitical reality is linguistically constituted. For all their differences, theoretical orientations such as constructivism, deconstruction, discourse analysis, and conceptual history share the underlying assumption that the study of linguistic entities holds the key to knowledge of the sociopolitical world. Yet there is a growing concern that the linguistic turn has unduly limited the domain of inquiry, and now has exhausted most of its potential. In the ensuing efforts to escape the prison of language, many scholars have been tempted to speak of an ongoing material turn or new materialism within the social sciences, inspired by a similar reorientation within continental philosophy. Yet exactly what is at stake in this reorientation, and what this will imply for the social sciences in more general terms remains unclear. Hence this symposium aims at critically assessing the material turn and its implications for the social sciences, by addressing the following questions:

• Is it possible to speak of a material turn or new materialism within the social sciences, and to what extent is such a turn cohesive, ontologically as well as epistemologically?
• What are the main objects of inquiry identified, and how do they differ from those of older forms of materialism?
• What are the main theoretical challenges posed by the material turn for the social sciences, and how do these affect their relationship to the natural sciences?

The symposium will take place at Lund University and involve leading scholars from the social sciences and humanities. Please contact Jens Bartelson (jens.bartelson[at]svet.lu.se) for further information.