The publication of Form and Object: A Treatise on Things by Tristan Garcia, Prix de Flore-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, and screenwriter is a genuine event in the history of philosophy. Situating this event within classical, modern and contemporary dialectical space, Jon Cogburn evaluates Garcia's metaphysics, differential ontology, and militant anti-reductionism through a series of seemingly incompatible oppositions: substance/process, analysis/dialectic, simple/whole and discovery/creation. ogburn also includes a critical assessment of the consequences of Garcia's philosophy, the various unresolved problems in his treatise and the future prospects of speculative metaphysics.

A comprehensive narrative of nineteenth-century Ottoman cultural history

Making the claim that reality is more like memory than a permanent substance, this original work draws on Derrida and Malabou to suggest a picture of the world as an assemblage of spectral resonances and disseminations. In Memory Assemblages, Hilan Bensusan combines elements of continental and analytic philosophy to advance a theory of realism which insists on the reality of spectres, an ultrametaphysical approach departing from metaphysics while attending to the problems that triggered metaphysical investigation. In doing so, Bensusan builds on the reception of Derrida's hauntology, particularly by Latin American scholars in disciplines such as media studies, history, and political theory, and engages with currents of speculative realism as well as contemporary work on idealism and logic. Challenging the correlationist view in which being and time cannot be considered independently of subjectivity, Bensusan gives an account of exteriority where thought and reality share a common logic of addition. Central to the book is this philosophy of addition, where addition structures the insufficiency and incompleteness of whatever seems to be present: it is an operation that dismantles what has been before in a way that depends on that past consigned to memory. Addition is explored in light of the Derridian supplement, the Epicurean Swerve, Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of struction and the Marxist notion of forces of production. A coda further elaborates the notion of production in this context, arguing for a spectral Marxism and drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus.

What is reality, really? Are humans more special or important than the non-human objects we perceive? How does this change the way we understand the world? We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that objects - whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human or non-human - are mutually autonomous. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out the history, ideas and impact of Object-Oriented Ontology, taking in everything from art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles. A key figure in the contemporary speculative realism movement in philosophy and for his development of the field of object-oriented ontology, he was named by Art Review magazine as one of the 100 most influential figures in international art.

Against Continuity is the first book to demonstrate that the beating heart of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy is a systematic ontology of irreducible, singular entities. This requires a radical break with decades of Deleuzian orthodoxy, according to which Deleuze's metaphysics revolves around the dissolution of discrete entities into a continuous world of flows and events.With reference to all of Deleuze's work, including published and untranslated seminars, as well as the recently published 'Lettres et autres textes', Arjen Kleinherenbrink critically compares Deleuze's ontology to seven related contemporary thinkers: Levi Bryant, Maurizio Ferraris, Markus Gabriel, Manuel DeLanda, Graham Harman, Tristan Garcia and Bruno Latour. These comparisons establish Deleuze as an important precursor to object-oriented speculative realism and open up exciting new avenues of thought for critics and supporters of Deleuze alike.

This open access book investigates whether and how theoretical findings and insights in contemporary art conservation can be translated into the daily work practices of conservators or, vice versa, whether and how the problems and dilemmas encountered in conservation practice can inform broader research questions and projects. For several decades now, the conservation of contemporary art has been a dynamic field of research and reflection. Because of contemporary art’s variable constitution, its care and management calls for a fundamental rethinking of the overall research landscape of museums, heritage institutions, private-sector organizations and universities. At first, this research was primarily pursued by conservation professionals working in or with museums and other heritage organizations, but increasingly academic researchers and universities became involved, for instance through collaborative projects. This book is the result of such collaboration. It sets out to bridge the “gap” between theory and practice by investigating conservation practices as a form of reflection and reflection as a form of practice.

Design is inextricably interwoven with all aspects of life and has even produced its own astonishing genre of research. Design research opens up new perspectives of interdisciplinary empiricism, joining with economics, sociology, technology, and philosophy to produce analyses and syntheses that get to the heart of daily life. The twelve contributions from international authors that comprise this book vividly make this case. They cover the relationship between subject and object, animation, all forms of representation, design activism, and many other themes. This book is intended to inspire discussion. Its target reader is anyone seeking to expand their understanding of design, to fundamentally improve their praxis, and to more deeply appreciate life in all of its aspects.

'Overcoming the war of religion between analytics and continentals with a brand-new metaphysical insight, Graham Harman has restored to philosophy its greatness and value.' Maurizio Ferraris, Italian continental philosopher and author of the Manifesto of New Realism The Graham Harman Reader is the essential compendium of shorter works by one of the most influential philosophers of the twenty-first century. The writings in this volume are split into seven chapters. The first concerns Harman’s resistance to both downward and upward reductionism. The second chapter contains works that develop the specific fourfold structure of Object-Oriented Ontology. In the third, we find Harman’s novel arguments for why causal relations between two entities can only be indirect. The fourth chapter discusses why aesthetics deserves to be called first philosophy. The fifth chapter contains Harman’s underrated contributions to ethics and politics, and the sixth deals with epistemology, mind, and science. A concluding seventh chapter contains several previously unpublished writings not available anywhere else. Written in Harman’s typical clear and witty style, the /Reader/ is an essential resource for veteran readers of Harman and newcomers alike.

Clarifies and systematises the concepts and presuppositions behind the influential new field of assemblage theoryRead and download the preface, by series editor Graham Harman, and the Introduction to Assemblage Theory for free nowManuel DeLanda provides the first detailed overview of the assemblage theory found in germ in Deleuze and Guattari's writings. Through a series of case studies DeLanda shows how the concept can be applied to economic, linguistic and military history as well as to metaphysics, science and mathematics.DeLanda then presents the real power of assemblage theory by advancing it beyond its original formulation allowing for the integration of communities, institutional organisations, cities and urban regions. And he challenges Marxist orthodoxy with a Leftist politics of assemblages.Key FeaturesCritically connects DeLanda with more recent theoretical turns in speculative realismMakes sense of the fragmentary discussions of assemblage theory in the work of Deleuze and GuattariOpens up assemblage theory to sociology, linguistics, military organisations and science so that future researchers can rigorously deploy the concept in their own fields"e;

Reads Romantic literature through the lens of 21st century speculative realist philosophyRead and download the series editor's preface (by Graham Harman) and the Introduction to Romantic Realities for free nowSpeculative realism is one of the most exciting, influential and controversial new branches of philosophy to emerge in recent years. Now, Evan Gottlieb shows that the speculative realism movement bears striking a resemblance to the ideas and beliefs of the best-known British poets of the Romantic era.Romantic Realities analyses the parallels and echoes between the ideas of the most influential contemporary practitioners of speculative realism and the poetry and poetics of the most innovative Romantic poets. In doing so, it introduces you to the intellectual precedents and contemporary stakes of speculative realism, together with new understandings of the philosophical underpinnings and far-reaching insights of British Romanticism.Readings include:The poetry and poetics of Wordsworth in relation to Graham Harman's object-oriented ontology and Timothy Morton's dark ecologyColeridge's poems and ideas in relation to Ray Brassier's philosophical nihilism and Iain Hamilton Grant's revisionist readings of SchellingShelley's oeuvre in relation to Quentin Meillassoux's radical immanentism and Manuel DeLanda's process ontologyByron's best-known poems in relation to Alain Badiou's truth procedures and Bruno Latour's actor-network-theoryKeats' oeuvre in relation to Levi Bryant's onticology and Ian Bogost's alien phenomenology"e;