Genealogies of Speculation: Materialism and Subjectivity Since Structuralism

Genealogies of Speculation looks to break the impasse between the innovations of speculative thought and the dominant strands of 20th century anti-foundationalist philosophy. Challenging emerging paradigms of philosophical history, this text re-evaluates different theoretical and political traditions such as feminism, literary theory, social geography and political theory after the speculative turn in philosophy. With contributions from leading writers in contemporary thought this book is a crucial resource for studying cultural and art-theory and continental philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Contributor Biographies Armen Avanessian and Suhail Malik – Introduction: Speculative Genealogies GENEALOGY 1. Steven Shaviro – Foreign Territory: The Promises and Perils of Speculative Realism 2. Adrian Johnston – Reflections of a Rotten Nature: Hegel, Lacan and Material Negativity 3. Levi R. Bryant – For a Realist Systems Theory: Luhmann, the Correlationist Controversy and Materiality 4. Sjoerd van Tuinen -Deleuze: Speculative and Practical Philosophy 5. Quentin Meillassoux – Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition: A Speculative Materialist Analysis of the Sign Devoid of Meaning GENEALOGY 1. Steven Shaviro – Foreign Territory: The Promises and Perils of Speculative Realism 2. Adrian Johnston – Reflections of a Rotten Nature: Hegel, Lacan and Material Negativity 3. Levi R. Bryant – For a Realist Systems Theory: Luhmann, the Correlationist Controversy and Materiality 4. Sjoerd van Tuinen -Deleuze: Speculative and Practical Philosophy LANGUAGES OF SPECULATION 5. Quentin Meillassoux – Iteration, Reiteration, Repetition: A Speculative Materialist Analysis of the Sign Devoid of Meaning 6. Armen Avanessian – Language Ontology 7. Arne De Boever – The Realist Novel and 'the Great Outdoors': Towards a Literary-Speculative Realism 8. Suhail Malik – Materialist Reason and its Languages. Part One: Absolute Reason, Absolute Deconstruction SCIENCE 9. Nathan Coombs – Underlabouring for Science: Althusser, Brassier, Bhaskar 10. Dorothea Olkowski – Formalism, Materialism and Consciousness 11. Myra J. Hird and Kathryn Yusoff – Subtending Relations: Bacteria, Geology and the Possible Index

About the Author :
Dr. Armen Avanessian teaches at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and is co-author of Speculative Drawing (Sternberg Press, 2014) and Present Tense (Bloomsbury, 2015). Dr. Suhail Malik is Reader in Critical Studies in the Department of Art, Goldsmiths, London, UK.

Review :
The philosophies of Speculative Realism come in two basic flavors: rationalist and non-rationalist, both of them largely opposed to the poststrucuralist currents that dominated the late 20th-century. While Avanessian and Malik align themselves firmly with the rationalist camp of SR, they also defend poststructuralism in a manner foreign to their fellow rationalists. In so doing, they have assembled a balanced collection of essays that breaks new ground in relating the thought of Althusser, Cavailles, Lacan, Luhmann, Novalis, Peirce, Whitehead, analytic philosophy, and poststrucuralist feminism to the ideas of the Speculative Realists. This book should quickly become one of the authoritative anthologies in the field. Graham Harman, Distinguished University Professor, American University in Cairo, Egypt