Prince of Networks is out

What we’ve all been waiting for: the paperback version of Graham Harman‘s latest book, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics, is now available from re.press. This is a great moment for ANTHEM of course, not only because it marks the fruition of a review process that we have been fortunate to be part of (see The Harman Review), but also because this book promises to be a milestone in the debate about the relationship between actor-network theory and phenomenology, and more specifically, between Latour and Heidegger. In Lucas Introna’s words:

Graham Harman’s book Prince of Networks is a wonderfully eloquent exposition of the metaphysical foundations of Latour’s work. This is not an introduction to Latour. It is rather a skilful and penetrating interpretation of his work, as well as a insightful Heideggerian critique. At last somebody has taken Latour to heart and to task. I cannot imagine a more forceful, incisive and lucid analysis of the foundations of Latour’s work than this one.

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New Metaphysics at OHP: Call for book proposals

And what better way to bid farewell to the old year and usher in the new here at ANTHEM, than with this announcement just in from Graham Harman:

New Metaphysics

Series editors: Graham Harman and Bruno Latour

The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphysics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analytic-continental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the continental reverence for dusty textual monuments. We favor instead the spirit of the intellectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical “sound” from any nation of the world.

The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical classics, and will consider secondary works of especial force and daring. But our main interest is to stimulate the birth of disturbing masterpieces of twenty-first century philosophy. Please send project descriptions (not full manuscripts) to Graham Harman, graham@rinzai.com. Open Humanities Press is an international Open Access publishing collective. OHP was formed by scholars to overcome the current crisis in publishing that threatens intellectual freedom and academic rigor worldwide. All OHP publications are peer-reviewed, published under open access licenses, and freely and immediately available online through www.openhumanitiespress.org.

Recording of Graham Harman’s talk on Manuel DeLanda

A recording of Graham Harman’s ANTHEM seminar talk at the LSE yesterday, entitled “Assemblages According to Manuel DeLanda,” and the discussion that followed, is available here (1 hr 47 min). A PDF file of the PowerPoint slides can be downloaded from here.

Harman evaluated the ontological assumptions behind DeLanda’s realism, his notion of assemblage and his theory of causation, by tracing their origins in Deleuze and Bhaskar, among others. He then contrasted DeLanda’s ontology with that of Bruno Latour and concluded by presenting his own object-orientated approach to thinking about causation, objects, and emergence.

On the Horrors of Realism: An Interview with Graham Harman

The most recent issue of Pli – The Warwick Journal of Philosophy has an interview with Graham Harman “On the Horrors of Realism.” Harman speaks to Tom Sparrow about object-oriented philosophy, phenomenology, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger’s fourfold, Meillassoux’s correlationism, Lingis, Derrida and Foucault, DeLanda’s realism and Latour’s relationism, speculative realism, Whitehead, Leibniz, Zubiri, H.P. Lovecraft and China Miéville, and of course metaphysics. Harman speaks of weird things, about the horror of the real.

Actor-network metaphysics: Graham Harman on Bruno Latour

On 6 February 2008 Graham Harman will be giving a talk on the metaphysics of Bruno Latour at 4pm in room C91 at Lancaster University Management School. Harman will be focusing on Latour’s Irreductions (Part II of The Pasteurization of France) in order to evaluate the key tenets of his metaphysics, while also contrasting it with Heidegger’s philosophy. Read the abstract here.

The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics, 5-Feb-08

Those of you who attended Graham Harman’s talk at the LSE or have listened to the recording will already know that Harman has completed the manuscript for his latest book entitled Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. ANTHEM is currently busy organising a symposium to take place on 5 February 2008 at the LSE. It will be a unique encounter between authors, texts and readers, by bringing together Graham Harman, Bruno Latour and a roomful of philosophers and social scientists to discuss the issues raised by the manuscript. Our aim is to evaluate the contribution of Latourian actor-network theory to philosophy and its implications for social science research.

Graham Harman on Heidegger and Latour

Graham Harman will be giving a talk entitled “On Actors, Networks, and Plasma: Heidegger vs. Latour vs. Heidegger” at ISIG at the LSE at 12:00 on Thursday 29 November 2007.