Counter-insurgency is a urgent issue in American life today--indeed around the world--as state and non-state actors alike perfect the art of subduing popular upheaval. Viewing individuals and populations as liabilities even threats, the army and the police have been forced to adopt a series of new tactics, from urban warfare and occupation, to ideological campaigns and the winning of “hearts and minds,” to torture and other forms of non-lethal force.

The police have recently come under scrutiny in the wake of a spate of killings. And rallies against police brutality are met by cops in riot gear and military-grade equipment recently procured through Pentagon grants. Police vehicles equipped with Stingrays and LRADs are now a common appearance at protests and marches, not to mention semi-automatic weapons, flash grenades, tear gas, and pepper spray. Continue reading →

(Here's also a podcast of the recent panel discussion between me and Shaviro hosted by the New School on Nov 7th.)

With the recent publication of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism, Steven Shaviro confirms his status as one of the most interesting speculative realist authors. In a philosophical field littered with mines and booby traps, characterized by antagonisms and growing factionalism, Shaviro has managed to produce a very lively book filled with equitable and generous readings of dozens of authors. He's certainly the most diplomatic author working in speculative realism today, while still pursuing a particular line of argument all his own. The book is filled with creative and insightful observations on a number of different contemporary debates and conversations. Yet at the same time Shaviro has carved out an original set of concerns and proposals for the future of speculative thinking.

As I see them, the three basic contributions to speculative realism made by Shaviro are (1) connectionism, (2) panpsychism, and (3) aesthetics as first philosophy. Continue reading →

Here is an audio recording  on "The Changing Fortunes of Contemporary French Theory," in which I say some flattering things about Laruelle and some unflattering things about Latour.

The recording is from a recent lecture in the Film and Visual Studies program at Harvard. The doctoral students there were incredibly interesting and generous discussants. All in all an excellent visit.

Here is the dossier of network images discussed about 14 minutes into the talk.

There's a new issue of Parrhesia. It's one of the most interesting journals active today and I encourage you to take a peek if you haven't already. In browsing through the issue I was struck by a few things. First, Laruelle's fingerprints are all over this issue. This is evident more in the reviews than the articles two of which are by or about Bernard Stiegler -- although it's interesting to note that Stiegler has credited Laruelle with "having introduced me to the work of Gilbert Simondon." In addition to the review of Laruelle's Dictionary of Non-Philosophy, I know that Daniel Barber, Alex Dubilet, Anthony Smith, and Ian James are all interested in Laruelle or working on him in some way or another.

The second thing that occurs to me is how important immanence remains in contemporary debates. Immanence has always occupied an odd place in the history of philosophy, often appearing as a counter-orthodoxy or heresy that tears the fabric of metaphysical representation. Theories of immanence resist describing things "as" they are. Rather immanence identifies things "in" whatever they are.

But before exploring the how of immanence, let's revisit the why. Why should we care about theories of immanence? Is immanence a good thing? If so, why? Continue reading →

I've been thinking a lot about pessimism recently. Eugene has been deep in this material for some time already. In fact he has a new, lengthy manuscript on pessimism called Infinite Resignation, which is a bit of departure from his other books in terms of tone and structure. I've read it and it's excellent. Definitely “the worst” he's ever written! Following the style of other treatises from the history of philosophical pessimism--Leopardi, Cioran, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and others--the bulk of the book is written in short aphorisms. It's very poetic language, and some sections are driven by his own memories and meditations, all in an attempt to plumb the deepest, darkest corners of the worst the universe has to offer.

Meanwhile, the worst can't stay hidden. Pessimism has made it to prime time, to NPR, and even right-wing media. Despite all this attention, Eugene seems to have little interest in showing his manuscript to publishers. A true pessimist! Not to worry, I'm sure the book will see the light of day eventually. Or should I say dead of night? When it does, the book is sure to sadden, discourage, and generally worsen the lives of Thacker fans everywhere. Continue reading →

I recently interviewed author Benjamin Noys about accelerationism, negation, abstraction, and his new book Malign Velocities. Read the whole interview at 3:AM Magazine.

SPECULATIVE FUTURES
A Conversation with Steven Shaviro & Alexander Galloway

Moderated by Eugene Thacker

Presented by the Liberal Studies Program of the New School for Social Research & the School of Media Studies, New School for Public Engagement.

Friday, November 7, 2014, 5:30pm

Continue reading →

I'm pleased to announce the publication of a new book, Laruelle: Against the Digital. My position is a bit idiosyncratic. Rather than offering a synopsis or critical annotation of Laruelle's work, the book aims to collide Laruelle's non-standard method with the concept of digitality. I say concept of digitality because the book does not discuss the Web, computers, video games, or even binary numbers. Instead the book addresses a general principle that subtends and facilitates all of these kinds of technologies.

I define digitality as a process of distinction. Thus I see an immediate resemblance with Laruelle's notion of the Philosophical Decision. Philosophy and digitality both require a fundamental act in which something is divided into two. For example metaphysics requires the notion of a division between essences and instances. And on a computer chip data is modeled and processed by means of voltage differentials. This fundamental action is important: distinction, division, decision, or discretization. Not so much the proverbial “zero and one” of computer culture, I'm focused here on “one and two,” or what it means to move from one to two. Continue reading →

(This is the second of two excerpts from my talk at “Superpositions--A Symposium on Laruelle and the Humanities” hosted at the Center for Transformative Media at the New School. Read part one.)

In preparing for this conference, I was reminded of the many different kinds of undertakings represented here and elsewhere. With his background in philosophy and religious studies, Anthony Paul Smith has produced a treatise on a non-standard theory of nature and ecology. And I am just finishing Katerina Kolozova's book Cut of the Real on Laruelle and poststructuralist feminism, which I find to be an incredibly original and courageous undertaking, not least because she's taking on some of the most fundamental assumptions of the entire field of feminist theory! Continue reading →

(This is the first of two excerpts from my talk at “Superpositions--A Symposium on Laruelle and the Humanities” hosted at the Center for Transformative Media at the New School. Read part two.)

Newcomers to Laruelle often find his work challenging. There is little familiar in Laruelle to serve as anchor, particularly for those of us reared on marxism, poststructuralism, or cultural studies. Laruelle is no sixty-eight radical like Guy Debord or Michel Foucault. He is not a public intellectual cast from the Sartrean mold like Alain Badiou. He does not practice phenomenology or dialectics, and he has little sympathy for today's reigning Hegelianism championed by the likes of Slavoj Žižek, Catherine Malabou, or Judith Butler. His is not a familiar way of thinking. In fact it is a genuinely “strange” one, or as Anthony Paul Smith has called it, a stranger thought.

Laruelle gives a basic instruction, one that reveals the distinction between philosophy and theory--or “science,” as Laruelle, Althusser and others often prefer to called it. His instruction is that the best response to philosophy is not more philosophy. The best response to philosophy is to stop doing it. Continue reading →