Abstract
Manuel DeLanda is one of the few admitted realists in present-day continental philosophy, a position he claims to draw from Deleuze. DeLanda conceives of the world as made up of countless layers of assemblages, irreducible to their parts and never dissolved into larger organic wholes. This article supports DeLanda’s position as a refreshing new model for continental thought. It also criticizes his movement away from singular individuals toward disembodied attractors and topological structures lying outside all specific beings. While endorsing DeLanda’s realism, I reject his shift from the actual to the virtual.
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Notes
DeLanda (2002, p. 4).
Personal communication, January 30, 2007.
Zizek and Daly (2004, p. 26).
Zizek and Daly (2004, pp. 25–26).
Zizek and Daly (2004, p. 97).
Meillassoux (2008).
Whitehead (1979).
DeLanda (2002, pp. 9–10).
Bhaskar (1997).
DeLanda (2002, p. 32).
DeLanda (2006, pp. 27–28).
DeLanda (2006, p. 21).
DeLanda (2006, pp. 28–29).
DeLanda (2006, p. 29).
DeLanda (2006, p. 21).
Kripke (1996).
DeLanda (2006, p. 12).
DeLanda (2006, p. 12).
DeLanda (2006, p. 14).
DeLanda (2006, p. 22).
References
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DeLanda, Manuel. 2002. Intensive science and virtual philosophy. London: Continuum.
DeLanda, Manuel. 2006. A new philosophy of society. London: Continuum.
Kripke, Saul. 1996. Naming and necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Meillassoux, Quentin. 2008. After finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. Trans. Ray Brassier. London: Continuum.
Whitehead, Alfred North. 1979. Process and reality. Detroit: Free Press.
Zizek, Slavoj, and Glyn Daly. 2004. Conversations with Zizek. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
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Harman, G. DeLanda’s ontology: assemblage and realism. Cont Philos Rev 41, 367–383 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9084-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9084-7