After the "Speculative Turn": Realism, Philosophy, and Feminism

After the
Author: Katerina Kolozova
Publisher: punctum books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2016
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0998237531

Recent forms of realism in continental philosophy that are habitually subsumed under the category of "speculative realism," a denomination referring to rather heterogeneous strands of philosophy, bringing together object-oriented ontology (OOO), non-standard philosophy (or non-philosophy), the speculative realist ideas of Quentin Meillassoux and Marxism, have provided grounds for the much needed critique of culturalism in gender theory, and the authority with which post-structuralism has dominated feminist theory for decades. This publication aims to bring forth some of the feminist debates prompted by the so-called "speculative turn," while demonstrating that there has never been a niche of "speculative realist feminism." Whereas most of the contributions featured in this collection provide a theoretical approach invoking the necessity of foregrounding new forms of realism for a "feminism beyond gender as culture," some of the essays tackle OOO only to invite a feminist critical challenge to its paradigm, while others refer to some extent to non-philosophy or the new materialisms but are not reducible to either of the two. We have invited essays from intellectual milieus outside the Anglo-Saxon academic center, bringing together authors from Serbia, Slovenia, France, Ireland, the UK, and Canada, aiming to promote feminist internationalism (rather than a "generous act of cultural inclusion"). CONTENTS Katerina Kolozova - Preface: After the "Speculative Turn" Nina Power - Philosophy, Sexism, Emotion, Rationalism Katherine Behar - The Other Woman Anne-Françoise Schmid - Libérer épistémologiquement le féminisme Patricia Ticineto Clough - Notes for "And They Were Dancing" Joan Copjec - No: Foucault Jelisaveta Blagojevic - Thinking WithOut Marina Grzinic - Rearticulating the Speculative Turn Frenchy Lunning - The Crush: The Firey Allure of the Jolted Puppet Nandita Biswas Mellamphy - (W)omen out/of Time: Metis, Medea, Mahakali Michael O'Rourke - "Girls Welcome!!!" Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Queer Theory Katerina Kolozova, PhD, is the director of the Institute in Social Sciences and Humanities-Skopje, Macedonia and a professor of gender studies at the University American College-Skopje. She is also visiting professor at several universities in Former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. In 2009, Kolozova was a visiting scholar in the Department of Rhetoric (Program of Critical Theory) at the University of California-Berkeley. She is the author of Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststucturalist Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle (punctum books, 2015). Eileen A. Joy is the Director of punctum books and has published widely on medieval literature, cultural studies, intellectual and literary history, ethics, affects and embodiments, the post/human, and speculative realism. She is the co-editor of postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies and the Lead Ingenitor of the BABEL Working Group. She is also the co-editor of The Postmodern Beowulf (West Virginia University Press, 2007), Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (Palgrave, 2007), Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (punctum, 2012), On Style: An Atelier (punctum, 2013), Speculative Medievalisms: Discography (punctum, 2013), Burn After Reading (punctum, 2014), and Fragments for a History of a Vanishing Humanism (Ohio State, 2016).

The Speculative Turn

The Speculative Turn
Author: Levi Bryant
Publisher: re.press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0980668344

Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the current giants of this generation, this new focus takes numerous different and opposed forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the center of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come.

Object-Oriented Feminism

Object-Oriented Feminism
Author: Katherine Behar
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1452952094

The essays in Object-Oriented Feminism explore OOF: a feminist intervention into recent philosophical discourses—like speculative realism, object-oriented ontology (OOO), and new materialism—that take objects, things, stuff, and matter as primary. Object-oriented feminism approaches all objects from the inside-out position of being an object too, with all of its accompanying political and ethical potentials. This volume places OOF thought in a long history of ongoing feminist work in multiple disciplines. In particular, object-oriented feminism foregrounds three significant aspects of feminist thinking in the philosophy of things: politics, engaging with histories of treating certain humans (women, people of color, and the poor) as objects; erotics, employing humor to foment unseemly entanglements between things; and ethics, refusing to make grand philosophical truth claims, instead staking a modest ethical position that arrives at being “in the right” by being “wrong.” Seeking not to define object-oriented feminism but rather to enact it, the volume is interdisciplinary in approach, with contributors from a variety of fields, including sociology, anthropology, English, art, and philosophy. Topics are frequently provocative, engaging a wide range of theorists from Heidegger and Levinas to Irigaray and Haraway, and an intriguing diverse array of objects, including the female body as fetish object in Lolita subculture; birds made queer by endocrine disruptors; and truth claims arising in material relations in indigenous fiction and film. Intentionally, each essay can be seen as an “object” in relation to others in this collection. Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, University of Michigan; Karen Gregory, University of Edinburgh; Marina Gržinić, Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts; Frenchy Lunning, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; Timothy Morton, Rice University; Anne Pollock, Georgia Tech; Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Columbia University; R. Joshua Scannell, CUNY Graduate Center; Adam Zaretsky, VASTAL.

After the Human

After the Human
Author: Sherryl Vint
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108865151

After the Human provides a comprehensive overview of how a range of philosophical, ethical, and political ideas under the framework of posthumanism have transformed humanities scholarship today. Bringing together a range of interdisciplinary scholars and perspectives, it puts into dialogue the major influences from philosophy, literary study, anthropology, and science studies that set the stage for a range of new questions to be asked about the relationship of the human to other life. The book's central argument is that posthumanism's challenge to and disruption of traditional humanist knowledge is so significant as to presage a sea-change from the humanities into the posthumanities. After the Human documents the emergence of posthumanist ideas in the fractures within traditional disciplines, examines the new objects of analysis that thus came into prominence, and theorizes new interdisciplinary methods of study that followed.

The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism

The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism
Author: Tilottama Rajan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2023-06-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3031273451

The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism offers a wide-ranging dialogue between theory and German Idealism, joining up the various lines of influence connecting German Idealist and Romantic philosophies in all their variety to post-'68 European philosophies, from Derrida and Deleuze to Žižek and Malabou. Key features: Provides in-depth reflections on the various conversations between German Idealism and theory, including an expanded canon of Idealist philosophers and a wide range of contemporary anti-foundationalist thinkers. Includes marginalized voices and concepts that reflect both contemporary concerns as well as the sheer abundance of readings of German Idealism undertaken by European theorists over the last fifty years. Expands the existing scholarship by focusing on new, future directions emerging out of the idealism-theory relationship. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism is essential reading for researchers and students of all levels — from senior scholars to advanced undergraduates — working on the legacy of German Idealist philosophers within philosophy departments, as well as all those interested in theory from across the humanities.

The Universe of Things

The Universe of Things
Author: Steven Shaviro
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 145294282X

From the rediscovery of Alfred North Whitehead’s work to the rise of new materialist thought, including object-oriented ontology, there has been a rapid turn toward speculation in philosophy as a way of moving beyond solely human perceptions of nature and existence. Now Steven Shaviro maps this quickly emerging speculative realism, which is already dramatically influencing how we interpret reality and our place in a universe in which humans are not the measure of all things. The Universe of Things explores the common insistence of speculative realism on a noncorrelationist thought: that things or objects exist apart from how our own human minds relate to and comprehend them. Shaviro focuses on how Whitehead both anticipates and offers challenges to prevailing speculative realist thought, moving between Whitehead’s own panpsychism, Harman’s object-oriented ontology, and the reductionist eliminativism of Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier. The stakes of this recent speculative realist thought—of the effort to develop new ways of grasping the world—are enormous as it becomes clear that our inherited assumptions are no longer adequate to describe, much less understand, the reality we experience around us. As Shaviro acknowledges, speculative realist thought has its dangers, but it also, like the best speculative fiction, holds the potential to liberate us from confining views of what is outside ourselves and, he believes, to reclaim aesthetics and beauty as a principle of life itself. Bringing together a wide array of contemporary thought, and evenhandedly assessing its current debates, The Universe of Things is an invaluable guide to the evolution of speculative realism and the provocation of Alfred North Whitehead’s pathbreaking work.

Speculations IV

Speculations IV
Author: Michael Austin
Publisher: punctum books
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2013
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780615797861

"With this special volume of Speculations, the editors wanted to challenge the contested term "speculative realism," offering scholars who have some involvement with it a space to voice their opinions of the network of ideas commonly associated with the name. Whilst undoubtedly born under speculative realist auspices, Speculations has never tried to be the gospel of a dogmatic speculative realist church, but rather instead to cultivate the best theoretical lines sprouting from the resurgence, in the last few years, of those speculative and realist concerns attempting to break free from some of the most stringent constraints of critique. Sociologist Randall Collins observed that, unlike other fields of intellectual inquiry, "[p]hilosophy has the peculiarity of periodically shifting its own grounds, but always in the direction of claiming or at least seeking the standpoint of greatest generality and importance." If this is the case, to deny that a shift of grounds has indeed become manifest in these early decades of the twenty-first century would be, at best, a sign of a severe lack of philosophical sensitivity. On the other hand, whether or not this shift has been towards greater importance (and in respect to what?) is not only a legitimate but a necessary question to ask.

After Poststructuralism

After Poststructuralism
Author: Rosi Braidotti
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2014-09-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317546806

The end of the Cold War revitalised continental philosophy and, more particularly, interest in it from outside philosophy. "After Poststructuralism: Transitions and Transformations" analyses the main developments in continental philosophy between 1980-1995, a time of great upheaval and profound social change. The volume ranges across the birth of postmodernism, the differing traditions of France, Germany and Italy, third generation critical theory, radical democracy, postcolonial philosophy, the turn to ethics, feminist philosophies, the increasing engagement with religion, and the rise of performativity and post-analytic philosophy. Analyses of the major figures are integrated within the discussion. After Poststructuralism reveals how continental philosophy - fuelled by an intense ethical and political desire to reflect changing social and political conditions - responded to the changing world and to the key issues of the time, notably globalisation, technology and ethnicity.

Post-Unification Turkish German Cinema

Post-Unification Turkish German Cinema
Author: Gozde Naiboglu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-01-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319644319

This book offers a post-representational approach to a range of fiction and non-fiction films that deal with labour migration from Turkey to Germany. Engaging with materialist philosophies of process, it offers analyses of films by Thomas Arslan, Christian Petzold, Aysun Bademsoy, Seyhan Derin, Harun Farocki, Yüksel Yavuz and Feo Aladag. Shifting the focus from the longstanding concerns of integration, identity and cultural conflict, Gozde Naiboglu shows that these films offer new expressions of lived experience under late capitalism through themes of work, social reproduction, unemployment and insecure work, exhaustion and precarity, thereby calling for a rethinking of the established ideas of class, community and identity.