Speculative September NYC

A series of SR and SR related events will be taking place mid September in NYC. Graham has posted about these here.

Here’s what I know of so far:

9/8/2011 – Graham Harman @ TPSNY – “New Paths from Husserl to Heidegger”

9/9/2011 – Graham Harman @ NYU – “What Causes Space”

9/14/2011 – Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Steven Shaviro @ The New School – Titles Here

I believe Eileen Joy is also speaking on this date @ TPSNY on SR and Literature.

9/15/2011 – Jane Bennett, Levi Bryant, and Graham Harman.”@ CUNY Grad Center – “Speculative Realism: A Conversation with Jane Bennett, Levi Bryant, and Graham Harman.”

9/16/2011 – Various Speakers  @ CUNY Grad Center – “Speculative Medievalisms 2”

9/17/2011 – Ben Woodard @ TPSNY – “Complicitous Continuums – The Horrors of the Cosmicist Earth”

I’ll be presenting on Cyclonopedia, Lovecraft, and some other geophilosophical weirdness.

Please comment if there are other events going on or if you have further details, links, etc.

The Return of Metaphysics

Here is the poster and schedule for the upcoming Return of Metaphysics conference at Villanova. Should be an interesting event.

Rumblings

Several interesting updates as of late:

Both Graham and Levi have interviews up on Another Heidegger Blog.

Reza has linked together several posts here paying particular attention to narrative-philosophical connections – especially those concerning video games and the possibility of  metaphysics videogame.

As has already been noted Collapse IV is available for download.

Late 2009/2010 promises to be a good one for Speculative Realism and its formless spawn as a slew of books are due to emerge…

Speculative Anxiety

In the closing pages of The Mathematics of Novelty Sam Gillespie turns to the subject of anxiety to relate Lacan to Badiou. Anxiety for Lacan, as Gillespie points out, centers on the lack of lack – the empty ground of being (p. 118). In terms of other philosophers’ concept of anxiety it is the “confrontation with possibility” – moral obligation for Kierkegaard and freedom in the world (Heidegger) (p. 119). Via Gillespie’s association of ontological anxiety with the objet a (for Lacan) and with the Event (Badiou) however, there is a certain formal (whether mathematizable or not) shell denying ontological anxiety from connecting to everyday objects.

While, on the one hand, I support a rather old fashioned distinction between the ontic and the ontological and cringe at a quotidianization of the ontological – it would seem that the formalization of the object denies the metaphysical everyday (as opposed to the muted metaphysical as the everyday). Or, in other words, the question becomes what is the depth or ontological reach of so called ordinary objects.

Harman on Assemblages and DeLanda

Peter over at ANTHEM has posted up a recording of a recent lecture given by Graham Harman on DeLanda, Deleuze, Latour and their various notions of assemblages, as well as their ontological commitments. Definitely recommended as a prelude to Graham’s forthcoming book on Latour!

[UPDATE: ANTHEM has posted a new, uncorrupted file of the recording here.]