{"id":8278,"date":"2015-06-09T21:27:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T02:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8278"},"modified":"2015-06-09T21:27:50","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T02:27:50","slug":"harmans-reply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/06\/09\/harmans-reply\/","title":{"rendered":"Harman’s reply"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/del>Graham Harman’s reply to my critical response<\/a> to his book Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political<\/em>, which appeared as part of\u00a0a book symposium in\u00a0Global Discourse<\/em>\u00a0earlier this year, is readable\u00a0online,\u00a0here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

I won’t address the details of that\u00a0reply here. Some of them relate to our divergent\u00a0interpretations of Latour, and since Harman has\u00a0now 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\u00a0suspects, what Latour says is not really the issue for me (though I have an interest in it).<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0He claims that his critics — in this case, Marco Altamirano<\/a>, 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.”<\/p>\n

In doing so, Harman’s\u00a0main premise\u00a0— that this is<\/em>\u00a0in 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\u00a0“overminers” of reality (like Whitehead and Latour)\u00a0and its\u00a0“monist” or “fluxist” “underminers” (like the others)\u00a0—\u00a0fades in its significance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If\u00a0Harman is correct about that premise, then his readings of those philosophers indeed become profoundly significant in their implications.\u00a0If he is not, then\u00a0they do\u00a0not.\u00a0That 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\u00a0(which they are). But it should\u00a0temper the enthusiasm with\u00a0which we might approach\u00a0them.<\/p>\n

(Note that I’ve addressed all these issues at greater length here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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<\/em>\u00a0is a\u00a0most helpful guide to Latour’s political philosophy, and that in itself makes it a valuable contribution for anyone interested in Latour or<\/em> political philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Graham Harman’s reply to my critical response to his book Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political, which appeared as part of\u00a0a book symposium in\u00a0Global Discourse\u00a0earlier this year, is readable\u00a0online,\u00a0here.\u00a0 I won’t address the details of that\u00a0reply here. Some of them relate to our divergent\u00a0interpretations of Latour, and since Harman has\u00a0now written two books (and more) about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,4422],"tags":[16805,16788,16806,16789],"class_list":["post-8278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought","tag-harman","tag-latour","tag-object-oriented-philosophy","tag-speculative-realism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-29w","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1118,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/09\/09\/things-slip-away-on-harmans-latourian-object-lessons\/","url_meta":{"origin":8278,"position":0},"title":"Things slip away… (on Harman’s Latourian object lessons)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Continuing from yesterday's post on Graham Harman... (Warning: This post is long.) Where Tool-Being presented a Heidegger flushed clean of his anthropocentrism, Prince of Networks takes Bruno Latour for a ride on a philosophical adventure toward a world not of actors and networks but of objects, pure if not so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1117,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/09\/08\/harmans-object-oriented-philosophizing\/","url_meta":{"origin":8278,"position":1},"title":"Harman’s object-oriented philosophizing","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019ve been reading Graham Harman\u2019s Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects and Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. More accurately, I\u2019ve been dipping into and sipping from the first and systematically digesting the second. Given the amount of blogging that goes on under the rising star(s) of \u2018object-oriented\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4151,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/05\/25\/the-beatnik-brotherhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":8278,"position":2},"title":"The beatnik brotherhood","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Graham Harman's note reiterating his position that Whitehead, Latour, Deleuze, Bergson, and Simondon (among others) do not make up a coherent philosophical \"lump\" -- \"pack\" or \"tribe\" might be more colorful terms here (if philosophers were cats, how herdable would they be?) -- makes me want to clarify my own\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/05\/tumblr_ljsf0kvMnF1qgjltdo1_500-275x248.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1129,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/09\/28\/still-process-relations-all-the-way-down\/","url_meta":{"origin":8278,"position":3},"title":"still process-relations all the way down","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Keeping up with Graham Harman means continually being tempted to respond to him, and since he doesn't allow comments on his blog, for reasons I completely understand, I can only hold my tongue or flap it here. (Or I can do the respectful thing and write up a lengthier and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/07\/05\/speculative-realism-its-ecological-sympathies\/","url_meta":{"origin":8278,"position":4},"title":"Speculative Realism & its ecological sympathies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The philosophical movement increasingly known as Speculative Realism is starting to get attention in these parts of town (the town being Academe, or at least its digital suburbs, and these parts being its ecocritical\/biocultural\/animaphilic ghettoes). News about the forthcoming re.press anthology, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism, has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8049,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/03\/09\/appearances\/","url_meta":{"origin":8278,"position":5},"title":"Appearances","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"My review of Graham Harman's recent book\u00a0Bruno Latour: Reassembling the Political, has been published online in the journal\u00a0Global Discourse. It's part of a book review symposium, which will be accompanied (in the print issue) by the author's reply to his\u00a0interlocutors. The journal has been publishing a lot on Latour's political\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8278"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8297,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8278\/revisions\/8297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}