Genealogies of Speculation - the chapters in this book debate the growing legacy of the new continental realisms for rethinking not just our access to the real, but to subjectivity, politics, and nature

Genealogies of Speculation: Materialism and Subjectivity since Structuralism, Suhail Malik and Armen Avanessian, eds., Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
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Genealogies of Speculation looks to break the impasse between the innovations of speculative thought and the dominant strands of 20th century anti-foundationalist philosophy. Challenging emerging paradigms of philosophical history, this text re-evaluates different theoretical and political traditions such as feminism, literary theory, social geography and political theory after the speculative turn in philosophy. With contributions from leading writers in contemporary thought this book is a crucial resource for studying cultural and art-theory and continental philosophy.


“The philosophies of Speculative Realism come in two basic flavors: rationalist and non-rationalist, both of them largely opposed to the poststrucuralist currents that dominated the late 20th-century. While Avanessian and Malik align themselves firmly with the rationalist camp of SR, they also defend poststructuralism in a manner foreign to their fellow rationalists. In so doing, they have assembled a balanced collection of essays that breaks new ground in relating the thought of Althusser, Cavaillès, Lacan, Luhmann, Novalis, Peirce, Whitehead, analytic philosophy, and poststrucuralist feminism to the ideas of the Speculative Realists. This book should quickly become one of the authoritative anthologies in the field.” ―Graham Harman


“Clear, incisive, and invariably important, the chapters in this book debate the growing legacy of the new continental realisms for rethinking not just our access to the real, but to subjectivity, politics, and nature. Framed in terms of these realisms' relationship to poststructuralism and other philosophical predecessors, this book refuses the facile "with us or against us" kind of debates often found around discussions of the new realisms, and in this way provides not just insightful essays on this new movement, but ways of rereading major figures of our recent philosophical past. Highly recommended.” ―Peter Gratton




“Rumors of Speculative Realism's demise have been greatly exaggerated; readers of Genealogies of Speculation will be in a position to marvel at the continuing reverberations of the intellectual revolution started by Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Iain Hamilton Grant, and Ray Brassier.” ―Jon Cogburn