Meillassoux

Regarding the Meillassoux piece, the part of his argument that both Brassier and Harman seem to find weak is his claim that the correlationist rejoinder to the realist is irrafragable: "You can't think [i]X[/i] without [i]thinking[/i] X." I think this actually raises the question, how cogent a category is "correlationism"? There seems to be a slant toward epistemology in all Speculative Realism, even variants that seem to want to get beyond or avoid it...really the big question about the movement as a whole is the role of epistemology. There is a lot of hand wringing about whether we're ever actually getting to the real. In Meillassoux's case a position he seemingly hasn't considered or at least taken seriously is one that considers all determinations as the product of relations without necessarily placing a privileged subject at the center (this is the route Graham Harman will take, with the addition that he will preserve an untouchable, and determinate, core of the object in-itself). Anyway I definitely recommend reading the Collapse piece before looking at [i]After Finitude[/i] since the argument is laid out very clearly without a lot of distracting nonsense about the arche-fossil etc.

First Meeting

Hello all!

Just a reminder that our first meeting will be held this Thursday, March 10 at Laura's house, 4526 Pine in West Philly. Because John Carvalho's class will be meeting at a different time this week, we are adjusting accordingly for 6:30 pm. We're reading Meillassoux's statement from the Course in Speculative Realism published in Collapse, Issue III, and as much of After Finitude as we can...

Of course, bring food or refreshment as you see fit, for yourself or others, etc etc.