“Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve” – Noam Chomsky
Here I map out the work of some various Speculative Realist philosophers, their propositions and sometimes dogmatically anthropocentric and limiting theories. I also examine the sociopolitical consequences of Object Oriented Ontology and the dubious relationship betwixt Quentin Meillassoux and his Maoist, anti-Semitic teacher Alain Badiou, along with the endorsement by the Stalinist philosopher Slavoj Zizek for the book “After Finitude.”
Graham Harman
Here is a piece of earlier critique specifically regarding Graham Harman and Object Oriented Ontology
“Graham Harman writes about objects. When considering two ‘objects’ he notes their interaction. For instance, he writes about cotton burning, ‘the cotton burns stupidly.’ If all objects are ontologically, or in their Being (Sein) ‘democratised’ or equal, then a certain philosophical ground arises from this proposition. Since these objects are equal, that is to say, the same ontologically, then it follows that they can be interchangeable – ontologically – with any other objects. Objects are objects. Moving from the ‘objects’ of cotton and fire, interacting as they are through what Harman calls a ‘sensual vicar’ – another object that is created from the interaction of the two objects, let us apply this proposition to another case. When a Monk in Tibet sets himself aflame, when he self-immolates in protest against China’s occupation of Tibet, does the Monk too ‘burn stupidly?’ Since the Monk and the cotton are in-their-being totally equal, an Object is an Object, the Monk, just another ‘object’ can be said to ‘burn stupidly.’ Political ideologies to light to Monks and cotton are all ‘objects’ for Harman. The object withdraws, as ‘we’ or ‘I’ or another object can never fully know its being. This is a proposition he picks up from Martin Heidegger the Nazi philosopher. Harman associates himself so much with Heidegger that he says he is more of a Heideggerian than Heidegger himself. Given Heidegger’s support for the discrimination and even extermination of Jews and other (objects), we can deduce via Harman’s object-oriented ontology that he would, at an ontological level (that is at the level of Sein) find no problem with Nazi ideology, for it is simply another object that withdraws and relates with other objects. We must then ask, given Harman’s fetishising of Heidegger and his objectification of everything, does ‘the Jew burn stupidly?’ That is to say, does the life of the Jewish person under the object of Nazism represent a mere interaction of equal objects via a ‘sensual vicar?’ … Does the Jew get gassed stupidly under the object of Nazi philosophy which is entirely equal to the Jew and interacts with the Jew through the sensual vicar of another object that being the gas – the gas supposedly I would imagine an object that interacts with the Jew that’s being killed and the gas chamber through a sensual vicar creating another object – everything is ontologically equal – what are the political consequences of that?”
Eilif Verney-Elliott, Let’s Move On, & Graham Harman’s OOO: 2013
Slavoj ZIzek
Further critique of the contemporary philosophical mise en scene
Here I scrutinise the contemporary state of the intelligentsia, including the prominent philosophers Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou. Zizek is a Stalinist and Badiou considers himself a Maoist. Both have leant their weight to the embryonic Speculative Realist philosophical movement through highly influential book endorsements. Within Speculative Realism is Object-Oriented Philosophy which purports that all objects from a computer chip, Maoism, fascism and your child are equal in their ‘being.’ Another flavour of Speculative Realism is ‘Flat Ontology’ which, like the aforementioned, reduces all ‘things’ or ‘units’ or ‘chunks’ (their words) to the same ‘being.’ Flat ontology ‘correlates’ as a product of the screen age, whereby the flat screen (TV) and computer screen penetrates the consciousness of the deepest recesses of contemporary philosophical jargon.
The sociological implications of Zizek and Badious’ insidious love for totalitarian leadership, along with these obscure new movements within philosophy distract from the immediate work that needs to be done by the intelligentsia and others. The entire pull of these philosophies and their jargons drain much needed time and resource out the immediate political and social needs of ending economic inequality, civil disobedience against the US, Chinese and Russian imperial projects, and bringing war criminals like Obama to trial for crimes against humanity. Like the anti-political nihilist or totalitarian philosophers of the 60s and 70s – Foucault (anti-political nihilist) and Kristeva (a Maoist until the late 70s) – these ‘fashionable’ thinkers are the nexus of many a dissertation, energy and thought within and outside of academia. They cannot be dismissed, yet they can be critiqued.
Regarding Zizek’s Stalinism and Badiou’s Maosim, I am here posting a Noam Chomsky response to a caller’s request for his thoughts on socialism, during a 2003 interview by Brian Lamb, for C-SPAN’s “In Depth” program. He describes how socialism was erroneously equated with the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist model of the Soviet Union and China by both the USA and its allies on the one hand, and the USSR and its allies on the other.
