Graham Harman: Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (2009)

Prince of Networks is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher. It has been eagerly awaited by readers of both Latour and Harman since their public discussion at the London School of Economics in February 2008.

Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central figures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centered in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance.

In Part Two, Harman summarizes Latour’s most important philosophical insights, including his status as the first “secular occasionalist.” The problem of translation between entities is no longer solved by the fiat of God (Malebranche) or habit (Hume), but by local mediators. Working from his own “object-oriented” perspective, Harman also criticizes the Latourian focus on the relational character of actors at the expense of their cryptic autonomous reality.

This book forms a remarkable interface between Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and the Speculative Realism of Harman and his confederates. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the emergence of new trends in the humanities following the long postmodernist interval.

Publisher: Re.press, June 2009
Anamnesis series
ISBN-13: 978-0-9805440-6-0
ISBN-ebook: 978-0-9806665-2-6
258 pages

This book is Open Access. This work is not simply an electronic book; it is the open access version of a work that exists in a number of forms, the traditional printed form being one of them.

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Manuel DeLanda: A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (2006)

Manuel DeLanda is a distinguished writer, artist and philosopher. In his new book, he offers a fascinating look at how the contemporary world is characterized by an extraordinary social complexity. Since most social entitles, from small communities to large nation-states, would disappear altogether if human minds ceased to exist, Delanda proposes a novel approach to social ontology that asserts the autonomy of social entities from the conceptions we have of them. This highly original and important book takes the reader on a journey that starts with personal relations and climbs up one scale at a time all the way to territorial states and beyond. Only by experiencing this upward movement can we get a sense of the irreducible social complexity that characterizes the contemporary world.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
ISBN 0826491693, 9780826491695
142 pages

Keywords and phrases
deterritorialization, Gilles Deleuze, Fernand Braudel, Manuel DeLanda, Thousand Plateaus, Felix Guattari, Anthony Giddens, Charles Tilly, causal, Max Weber, Ian Hacking, emergent properties, Pierre Bourdieu, nation-states, assemblage theory, economies of agglomeration, interac, phase space, linguistic, Michel Foucault

review (Steven Shaviro)
commentary from DeLanda reading group: Introduction (Levi Bryant); Chapter I (Levi Bryant); Chapter II (Alex Reid); Chapter III (Michael~); Chapter IV, part 1 & part 2 (Mark Edward); Chapter V

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Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language and Culture: Meaning in Language, Art and New Media (2004)

In this multi-disciplinary volume, comprising the work of several established scholars from different countries, central concepts associated with the work of the Bakhtin Circle are interrogated in relation to intellectual history, language theory and an understanding of new media. The book will prove an important resource for those interested in the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle, but also for those attempting to develop a coherent theoretical approach to language in use and problems of meaning production in new media.

Editors Finn Bostad, Craig Brandist, Lars Sigfred Evensen, Hege Charlotte Faber
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2004
ISBN 140391690X, 9781403916907
Length 235 pages

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