For theorists, the 2007 conference on speculative realism at Goldsmiths College in London is like the first Nirvana concerts in Belgium and the Netherlands. Afterward, everyone was there or wanted to be there.
The conference brought together several thinkers with more in common than in difference: criticism of the prevailing continental philosophy. Four philosophers stood out in particular: Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Iain Hamilton Grant. In the following years, speculative realism spread even far beyond philosophy. The theory podcast Strange Exiles recently discussed the rise of underground theory on the internet: theorists and thinkers who create networks outside the walls of the university and share knowledge with each other. Speculative Realism has played an important role in this.
Charlie Johns and Hilan Bensusan ignore this development in their eulogy to Fifteen Years of Speculative Realism. Johns, a philosopher affiliated with Goldsmiths College, emphasizes this in his extensive introduction: this book only explores the influence of Speculative Realism on philosophy. That is a pity but perhaps unavoidable. After all, there is so much to say about the influence of speculative realism.
Johns and Bensusan (University of Brasilia) proceed in a structured manner. Based on the essence of the theories of the most important founders of Speculative Realism, they arrive at four chapters on objects, nature, correlationism and nihilism. This is followed by two more chapters that go into more depth. The entertaining contribution by the well-known Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek is about the subject of Object Oriented Ontology – a subfield of Speculative Realism.
The most interesting contribution comes from Arjen Kleinherenbrink (Radboud University), who criticizes the leading philosophy of technology in the Netherlands by Peter-Paul Verbeek. According to Kleinherenbrink, Verbeek pays too little attention to the properties of objects (artifacts) and thus remains in an anthropocentric way of thinking about technology. That is precisely the way of thinking that speculative realism opposes: man is not at the center and is not the measure of things. Tyler Tritten (Gonzaga University) claims in his contribution that F.W.J. Schelling was the first genuine speculative realist. His 19th-century criticism of the still dominant philosophy of Hegel, Fichte, and Kant makes him the movement’s patron.
According to Johns and Bensusan, the influence of speculative realism in philosophy has been somewhat less visible in recent years. That is precisely why it would have been interesting to investigate its influence outside of philosophy and academia. In her contribution, Amanda Boetzkes (University of Guelph) makes a commendable attempt, but she also avoids underground theory.
That is where Speculative Realism flourishes. The influence is not limited to theory. In art and design, theory is practiced in relatively new disciplines, such as speculative design. Speculative Realism also forms a basis for innovative practices such as Xeno-Feminism, and a connection with the work of Donna Haraway and Sadie Plant is there for the taking. That cries out for a second book.
15 Years Of Speculative Realism: 2007-2022 is edited by Charlie Johns and Hilan Bensusan and published by Zer0 Books.
This review is originally published in Dutch in the print edition of Gonzo (circus) magazine #184.