Alexander Galloway

Responses to this article have been diverse and at times quite animated. It might make sense for me to respond and clarify a number of points and criticisms that have arisen.

First let’s dispense with some of the straw man arguments…

This article is not about capitalism or math or philosophy in general — it’s about post-fordism as a specific historical period.
It does not say that realism is bad or that realism should be thrown out.
It does not say that math or software are bad or that they should be thrown out.
It does not say that “OOO equals capitalism, therefore OOO is bad.”
It does not say that math entered philosophy under post-fordism — math has always been a part of philosophy.
It does not deny that math has always been a part of capitalism, prior to post-fordism.
It is not a defense of humanism.
It is not a defense of correlationism.
It is not a Hegelian argument, despite the tone of the final two sentences.
It is not an indictment of Badiou; it does not say that Badiou is complicit with capitalism.

Let’s go through a number of specific points, starting with the last one…

Continue reading “The Secondary Correlation — Further Thoughts on the Realism Kerfuffle” →

First let me say that, while this post will likely come across as confrontational, I do have a respect for Harman, particularly for his intellectual energy and literary output. I’ve never met him and can’t count him a friend, but I have corresponded with him on a few occasions. I must admit that his philosophy and politics (or lack thereof) leave me cold. A bit of context: my dissertation of 2001, which became my first book in 2004, is an analysis of networks as political systems, so I feel I have a lot to say about the topic of objects and networks. I’m also a computer programmer and, similar to someone like Ian Bogost, have actually coded the kind of object-oriented systems that OOO describes. (To his credit Harman rejects this association, claiming that “his” OO has nothing to do with computer science’s OO. But that’s a flimsy argument in my view, particularly when the congruencies are so clear. As Zizek might say, channeling Groucho Marx: if it’s called a duck, and quacks like a duck, don’t let that fool you — it really is a duck!) Continue reading “A response to Graham Harman’s “Marginalia on Radical Thinking”” →