DMF sent me a link to the new issue of
Analecta Hermeneutica HERE, which is on continental philosophy of religion. One article in particular seemed interesting but there were a few errors/or troubling issues in it which stand in need of correction or address. Peter Gratton's "Meillassoux's Speculative Politics" discusses in detail Meillassoux's ontology of the divine inexistence, although I found several things puzzling.
The first issue is that while Gratton largely acknolwedges the concrete similarities between Meillassoux and Kearney on the possible God (as well as similarities to Caputo's God to come), he states that Kearney's approach is based upon a particular Biblical passage or within a specific Biblical history. Having reviewed Kearney's book
The God Who May Be in my own research, this claim is only partially true as Kearney spends a good amount of time indicating the same sort of virtual
ontology that Meillassoux does in his discussions of the "metaphysics of the possible" (Nicholas of Cusa, see especially pages 37-8 in Kearney's book). This ontology and metaphysics of the possible is, for all intents and purposes, independent of the Biblical claim presented as a contextual device in the beginning of the book.
Second, other than some "obligatory" hat tipping to the usual suspects for providing excerpted translations of
The Divine Inexistence (a dissertation which is, by the way, available in microfiche
HERE, these libraries will copy it for you for a fee so it may be worth it if you read French), it was interesting to see that those translations were the primary source of research rather than either the dissertation itself, or more understandably, the essay "Immanence of the World Beyond" which boils down to essentials the dissertation.
This leads to a tangentially related point that (not Gratton
per se) but
elsewhere, where I am finding that there is a good amount of research on Meillassoux and theology/religion that is simply getting ignored. Why didn't this research (including talks/conferences etc.) appear referenced in the article? It was as if there was a stretch to include allies yet much of the more concrete work out there specifically relating to the topic at hand was, well, just
missing. Those were my two thoughts about it - otherwise I appreciated Peter's effort and enjoyed what he wrote. If you are into Meillassoux/theology then you should definitely read Peter's article which I've linked above. I'd now like to move on to a related but more distant point.
***
So on a less related note, this reminds me of how an ex-friend of mine was trying to make excuses for his crony friends (mentioned in Gratton's article incidentally) who time and time again try to white me out from the history books by deliberately ignoring my work due to personal dislike and crony politics. His line was that "they just aren't interested in theology" - and he then, rather arrogantly, went on ask, well, "What have
you done?" I then proceeded to offer a litany of my work in the field for
that year alone. This is surprising as I wonder why I would have to justify the fact that I do research in a field to someone whose momentary success is due to his alliance with these goons (which indeed will pass as the fad he's bought into passes). I simply question scholarly integrity any time a scholar
intentionally ignores certain sources in the field and then stretches and goes to unrelated others for personal rather than scholarly-research support. But I can explain to you why this is. (Again, I want to be clear and collegial, the thought popped into my
mind while reading Peter's article but he isn't guilty of the
cronyism that I am critiquing. Far from it, to be fair. No one can include all sources in everything all of the time.)
I question scholarly integrity when one KNOWS who is working on what, who has published what, who has given talks on what, etc. However, rather than work through the literature, it is simply
easier to become a sports writer and inflate the value of those who pass a friendship test ("Well, my friends speak highly of so-and-so!" or "It's so-and-so, so
of course it's right!" or just cover only who you have personal connections with rather than be honest and do a good review of the literature and account for who is working on what. On the other hand, the tactic includes just disparaging or ignoring those who you don't or can't get along with. It's as simple as that. This is why I support academic groups or para-academic groups (now the newly founded P.E.S.T. for example) who basically serve as a fist in the face of academic repression and cronyism.
In the end, the above observation is a point which is far, far away from Gratton's article and these thoughts aren't directed personally at him in any way (I've emailed him once and he seemed nice enough), but it came to mind when I read the article and happened to notice that alot of the research available out there on Meillassoux was missing from it (whether conferences, talks, papers, or even open access publications, which is weird considering
that Analecta Hermeneutic is open access). But to boot, more generally speaking, it's just a shame that good scholars who do work in speculative continental philosophy - whether Terry Blake, or one the Americanist side Jason Hills, are not engaged because personal, rather than philosophical, reasons. They have good arguments, excellent work, but where is the engagement?
We often here the cry that, well, in order for me to engage you "I need arguments." We supply arguments, then it turns into, "Well, that's just on a blog and blogs are too democratic anyway." Then it's
published in an academic venue, and then it's just silence from there. I think that's telling about the original lack of substance with these people anyway and how disgustingly politicized and personal our small little arena of research in the speculative world has become. Their side just doesn't have
arguments to address, while we do nothing but provide good arguments from the outset. It seems to be two different levels entirely.
We're out here. Know that. Know that they
fear blogs because it's our voice. They say its snark, but who are the worst perpetrators of snark? They've taken to twitter, so have we. We won't be silenced. So, watch out.
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