Notes Toward an Extimate Materialism: A Reply to Graham Harman

Russell Sbriglia

doi:10.1515/opphil-2020-0175

Abstract

Abstract This article mounts a defense of my and Slavoj Žižek’s co-edited anthology, Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, against the two main criticisms of it made throughout Graham Harman’s article “The Battle of Objects and Subjects”: (1) that we and our fellow contributors are guilty of gross overgeneralization when we classify thinkers from various schools of thought – among them New Materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and actor–network theory – under the broad rubric of the “new materialisms”; and (2) that despite our pretensions to the mantle of materialism, our Lacano-Hegelian position is actually a full-blown idealism. In responding to and attempting to refute these criticisms, I make the case that our Lacano-Hegelian model of dialectical materialism is an “extimate materialism.”

Highlights

This article mounts a defense of my and Slavoj Žižek’s co-edited anthology, Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, against the two main criticisms of it made throughout Graham Harman’s article “The Battle of Objects and Subjects”: (1) that we and our fellow contributors are guilty of gross overgeneralization when we classify thinkers from various schools of thought – among them New Materialism, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism, and actor–network theory – under the broad rubric of the “new materialisms”; and (2) that despite our pretensions to the mantle of materialism, our Lacano-Hegelian position is a full-blown idealism
I would like, here at the outset, to express my gratitude to Graham Harman for cordially inviting me to respond to his recent article, “The Battle of Objects and Subjects: Concerning Sbriglia and Žižek’s Subject Lessons Anthology,” in which he defends his object-oriented ontology (OOO) from the critiques leveled against it throughout my and Žižek’s anthology, and critiques the Lacano-Hegelian model of dialectical materialism championed by the anthology’s contributors
Seeing that Harman has limited his response to those chapters of the collection that most concern OOO, in what follows I have tried my best to limit my response to Harman himself, though I will occasionally have cause to address critiques from compatriots of his such as Levi Bryant, Manuel DeLanda, and Quentin Meillassoux.[1]

Summary

A dangerous method?

One of Harman’s more overarching complaints throughout his response to Subject Lessons is that we – Žižek and I, and some others in the collection, such as McGowan, Gorelick, and Alenka Zupančič – are “generally too indiscriminate in mixing various figures under the ‘New Materialist’ label, often suppressing crucial differences.”[4]. As we will see, is this not an entirely accurate characterization of my and Žižek’s classification of these various schools of thought, but there is considerable disagreement – even confusion – among these schools’ own members as to whether their philosophy is a materialism, a realism, or both In his response to Subject Lessons, Harman reiterates his anti-materialist stance by citing articles of his boasting such titles as “I Am of the Opinion That Materialism Must Be Destroyed,” “Realism Without Materialism,” and “Materialism Is Not the Solution.”[8] Surely, the title of the second of these three articles, “Realism Without Materialism,” would justify us in classifying Harman’s OOO as a “new realism” – especially given that, as I will address below, he explicitly rejects classic, “naïve” realism. For this reason alone – especially seeing that, as its title suggests, Subject Lessons is a book dedicated to defending the subject against such decenterings and demotions – I stand by our grouping of these various schools under the rubric of “new materialisms and realisms.”

Did somebody say materialism?

Did somebody say idealism?

Toward an extimate materialism