ANTHEM

The thing things (to cite Heidegger) and objects matter. The 2009 CRESC annual conference, Objects - What Matters? Technology, Value and Social Change, will review the object turn in social theory by focusing on the relationship between objects and value. The conference will take place in Manchester between 2-4 September 2009. Read the full call for papers and panel proposals here. According to the socializing finance blog keynote speakers will include Avery Gordon (UC Santa Barbara), Graham Harman (American University Cairo), Annemarie Mol (University of Twente), and Kathleen Stewart (University of Texas, Austin).

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.

The abstract for Graham Harman’s keynote address at the Deleuze2008 conference at Stavanger:

Graham Harman
‘The Assemblage Theory of Society’

This lecture considers the interesting ‘assemblage theory’ of society found in Manuel DeLanda’s A New Philosophy of Society (2006), which links up with some of the key issues of classical and present-day metaphysics, not to mention some of the central themes of this conference.

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The Deleuze2008 Conference in Stavanger, Norway is one of the city’s 2008 European Capital of Culture projects. It will take place on 7 and 8 November 2008 and it will also mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of Gilles Deleuze’s (1968) Difference and Repetition. Keynote speakers are Simon Duffy, Roland Faber, Graham Harman, Christian Kerslake, Daniel W. Smith and James Williams. The deadline for submitting abstracts is 12 September 2008. Further information on the call for papers is available here and on how to register here.

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.

Those of you who have read Graham Harman’s manuscript Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics will know that Quentin Meillassoux’s notion of correlationism features prominently in Harman’s assessment of Latour’s philosophy. Meillassoux will be speaking in London on the topic of “Time without Becoming” on 8 May 2008, at 5:30 pm at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University. Quentin Meillassoux’s book After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency is now also available in English in Ray Brassier’s translation and with Alain Badiou’s preface from Amazon UK. Further details about the event including directions available here.

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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Click here to listen to (1 hour) or download (27.7MB) the recording of Graham Harman’s talk “The Greatness of McLuhan” at the Media School Research Seminar at Bournemouth University on 4 February 2008. The event was introduced by Barry Richards and Peter Erdélyi.

Click here to listen to (1 hour 15 minutes) or download (34.9MB) the recording of Graham Harman’s lecture “On the Origin of the Work of Art (atonal remix)” at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth on 1 February 2008. Read the abstract here.

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On 13 February 2008 Graham Harman will be giving a philosophy research seminar entitled “Weird Ontology” between 15:00-17:00 in room PH82 at Bristol UWE.