ANTHEM

In addition to the recording and the PowerPoint slides of the ANTHEM session where it served as the basis for the discussion, a copy of Graham Harman’s paper “The Assemblage Theory of Society” on Manuel DeLanda is now also available online [PDF], courtesy of Nick at Speculative Heresy. This paper was first presented at the Deleuze2008 Conference in Stavanger, Norway. Check out the Resources page of Speculative Heresy for some other goodies.

It appears that in recent days the audio file of Graham Harman’s talk on Manuel DeLanda has become corrupted on eSnips, the free data storage service we use for hosting the ANTHEM recordings. We are not sure if it happened because of the volume of downloads (over 160 in a few days) or because of a change in service quality at eSnips, which has been recently acquired by another firm. In any case, after a number of failed attempts we have managed to upload a fresh copy of the file, which seems to work fine for now. Here is the link to the audio recording once more. Apologies for these technical problems, and also for the overbearing advertising on eSnips. Up until now we were fairly happy with this service but we may have to look for an alternative solution if these problems keep recurring. Any suggestions for other free file hosting services would be most welcome.

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.

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As announced earlier,  we are expecting Graham Harman to join us at Thursday’s ANTHEM seminar. Dr Harman has also very kindly agreed to give us a talk, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, in order to summarise but also expand on the main points of the paper (“The Assemblage Theory of Society”) that he has shared with us. The title of his talk is “Assemblages According to Manuel DeLanda.” The main themes are realism, causation, emergence, assemblages, essence, DeLanda, Deleuze, Bhaskar, Latour, and Harman’s own (Heideggerian) object-orientated philosophy.

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The ANTHEM group will be meeting from 4 to 7pm on Thursday 27 November 2008 at the London School of Economics and Political Science. We will be discussing a recent paper by Graham Harman, entitled “The Assemblage Theory of Society,” which examines the philosophical assumptions behind Manuel DeLanda’s Deleuzian assemblage theory, while contrasting it with the ontology of Bruno Latour. The main themes of the paper are realism, assemblage, essence, and emergence. We also expect Graham Harman to join us at some point (assuming his flight arrives on time).

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Thank you to Nick at Speculative Heresy for alerting us to the online publication of Graham Harman’s article ”DeLanda’s Ontology: Assemblage and Realism” in Continental Philosophy Review. Actually several of us from ANTHEM were at Goldsmiths on 20th April 2007 when Harman delivered the earlier version of this paper, which back then was entitled ”Networks and Assemblages: The Rebirth of Things in Latour and DeLanda.” DeLanda and Latour were already an intriguing juxtaposition, and when the figure of Heidegger and the fourfold emerged, we knew that we were entering interesting territory. At the end of the Goldsmiths session Harman gave one of us the hard copy of his paper, which set off a series of events culminating in The Harman Review in February 2008.

Click here to listen to (3 hours 24 minutes) or download (94.4MB) the recording of the symposium “The Harman Review: Bruno Latour’s Empirical Metaphysics” at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 5 February 2008. Speakers are Bruno Latour and Graham Harman. The panelists are Lucas Introna and Noortje Marres. The event is introduced by Leslie Willcocks and chaired by Edgar Whitley. There are also audience questions and comments. This event was organised by members of the ANTHEM Group and hosted by the Information Systems and Innovation Group (ISIG) of the Department of Management, LSE.

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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.

The first ANTHEM session of the current term from 16 October 2007 had been recorded and posted on this site. Click here to listen (1 hour 22 minutes). Further details on the current reading schedule are available here.

The ANTHEM reading sessions are currently under way. Please click here to see the current reading schedule. In the Michaelmas term (October to December 2007) we will be reading Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory in five instalments. Recordings of each session will be posted on this site. We invite you to join us in reading this book, listen to the discussion, and post your comments. If you would like to become a standing member of the ANTHEM gathering, you can apply for membership here. We are looking forward to a great discussion on this forum.