“To Have Done With Life” Conference Audio

Martin Hägglund has alerted me that audio files of the recent conference “To Have Done With Life: Vitalism and Anti-Vitalism in Contemporary Philosophy” in Zagreb have been posted. Along with Hägglund, participants included Catherine Malabou, Adrian Johnston, and Ray Brassier, and the entire thing has been thoroughly documented, including individual papers, question and answer sessions, and two roundtables.

“An Online Orgy of Stupidity”

This morning I shared a link to a delightful interview with Ray Brassier, but became increasingly aware that I should probably give it some main page love. Not least because of the savagery of the following:

“The ‘speculative realist movement’ exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever: actor-network theory spiced with pan-psychist metaphysics and morsels of process philosophy. I don’t believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students. I agree with Deleuze’s remark that ultimately the most basic task of philosophy is to impede stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in a ‘movement’ whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity”

So, yeah, have fun with that.