Graham Harman’s reply to my critical response to his book Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political, which appeared as part of a book symposium in Global Discourse earlier this year, is readable online, here.
I won’t address the details of that reply here. Some of them relate to our divergent interpretations of Latour, and since Harman has now written two books (and more) about Latour, I am sure he will be able to come up with counter-examples to any examples I provide in support of my interpretation. As Harman suspects, what Latour says is not really the issue for me (though I have an interest in it).
The bottom line in our disagreement is the same as ever: Harman insists there is an unbridgeable — and definitive — rift between philosophers of “instantaneous states,” among which he includes Latour and Whitehead, and philosophers of “continuous process and flow,” among which he includes Bergson and Deleuze. He claims that his critics — in this case, Marco Altamirano, Steven Shaviro, and myself — refuse to accept this rift and “paper” it over with “process, that two-headed snake of a word,” thereby “failing to come to grips with one of the major philosophical disputes of our time.”
In doing so, Harman’s main premise — that this is in fact “one of the major philosophical disputes of our time” — is left unexamined. It just happens to be that without this premise, Harman’s signal philosophical contribution — the proposition of an “object-oriented” middle way between relationist “overminers” of reality (like Whitehead and Latour) and its “monist” or “fluxist” “underminers” (like the others) — fades in its significance.
If Harman is correct about that premise, then his readings of those philosophers indeed become profoundly significant in their implications. If he is not, then they do not. That wouldn’t make those readings any less interesting, insightful, or entertaining (as they often are), nor does it make his books on Latour any less useful (which they are). But it should temper the enthusiasm with which we might approach them.
(Note that I’ve addressed all these issues at greater length here.)
Left in the background of this discussion is the fact that we agree on more than we disagree. While it’s not his most enjoyable book to read, Reassembling the Political is a most helpful guide to Latour’s political philosophy, and that in itself makes it a valuable contribution for anyone interested in Latour or political philosophy.
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