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New Projects Seminar Series: Continental Realism and Its Origins in Non-Philosophy

Stanimir Panayotov, Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

November 5, 11:00-15:00, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Staszic Palace, Nowy Świat 72 Warsaw, room 268 & online

Abstract:

Contemporary movements such as speculative realism (often re-branded as new realism) and object-oriented philosophy have new for 15 years raged their battles against the so-called continental anti-realism, which in turn is largely seen to represent the spirit of Kantian noumenal pessimism, the view that human knowledge is only ever reduced to knowledge of phenomena. While in many ways debates triggered by SR and OOP have been successful in wresting away the dominance of anti-realism, scholars and students often reduce these movement to a new tendency in contemporary continental thought, which in fact can be historicized in the work of Laruelle’s non-philosophy. In this seminar, followed by lecture and Q&A, Stanimir Panayotov will present under the umbrella term “continental realism” (Lee Beaver) these movements to historicize their agenda with Laruelle’s thought, particularly Meillassoux’s idea of “anti-correlationism.” Then we will discuss the “radicality” of Laruelle’s main theorizations of (the history of) philosophy and how this radicality relates to today’s spirit of the “end times.” Our aim will be to understand the solitary place of Laruelle in the grand epoch of deconstruction and how his “non-standard” thought set the ground for today’s continental realism – and what the latter implies for our contemporary condition.

The seminar will take place in the Staszic Palace & online. To sign up for the seminar please contact dr Mikołaj Ratajczak: mikolaj.ratajczak@ifispan.edu.pl

Reading List:

Laruelle, François. “A New Presentation of Non-Philosophy,” trans. by Ray Brassier. In François Laruelle, The Non-Philosophy Project, ed. by Gabriel Alkon and Boris Gunjevic, 119-40. New York: Telos, 2012.

Galloway, Alexander R. “Assessing the Legacy of That Thing that Happened after Poststructuralism.” Culture and Communication (September 6, 2015). www.cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/assessing-the-legacy-of-that-thing-that-happened-after-poststructuralism.

Recommended:

Laruelle, François and Jacques Derrida. “Controversy Over the Possibility of a Science of Philosophy,” trans. by Ray Brassier and Robin Mackay. In François Laruelle, The Non-Philosophy Project, ed. by Gabriel Alkon and Boris Gunjevic, 76-94. New York: Telos, 2012.

Additionally, if visitors of the seminar have time and desire, we can have a follow up event on Laruelle’s book Introduction to Non-Marxism:

Laruelle, François. Introduction to Non-Marxism, trans. by Anthony Paul Smith. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Univocal, 2015.

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Stanimir Panayotov is research fellow at the Department of Literary Theory, Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He is also postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Logic, Ethics, and Aesthetics in Sofia University, working on his project Nemopolitics (2023-2026). Previously, he was Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Studies (Tyumen, 2021-2023), a postdoctoral fellow at Center for Advanced Study in Sofia (Bulgaria, 2020-2021), and has taught various courses in humanities in Budapest, Jerusalem, Skopje, and Sofia. Most recently, he is co-editor of Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity (Routledge, 2024), Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2023), and editor of O-Zone: An Ecology of Objects (Punctum Books, forthcoming in 2024).