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HARMAN_CRAFT
December 6, 2018
Let's sample some of Graham Harman's highly deep and engaging
remarks from his "Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy" (2012):
"In a sense, the interaction between style https://books.google.com/books?id=VY3eWjog6ZYChttps://books.google.com/books?id=VY3eWjog6ZYC
and content is the central theme of this
book. The title _Weird Realism_ suggests And this phrasing suggests
that our plan is to work through Lovecraft that Harman pulled the title
towards a deeper conception of realism out of a hat and then tried
than is usual." to decide what it means.
"Most philosophical realism is
'representational' in character. Such The fact that our accounts of the
theories hold not only that there is a external world agree in most
real world outside all human contact respects, and that we can seem
with it, but also that this reality to learn things about it and use
can be mirrored adequately by the our knowledge to manipulate it,
findings of the natural sciences or all of that is completely
some other method of knowledge." irrelevant. And yet, despite the
radical solipsism that would seem
to imply, we're supposed to care
about Graham Harman's remarks on
these subjects.
And yeah: he wants to fight
the science wars some more.
In the age of global warming.
A bit out of touch
with the tenor of
the times, not that
"The remarks in this book against that's grounds for
paraphrase and the stupidity of all dismissal in itself...
content strongly suggest that this
is impossible."
Maybe I should put a spoliers
warning on this, but Harman's
remarks against paraphrase are
essentially a dismissal of the
possibility of writing fair
summaries, and he proves this
Daniel Green discusses this by using an example of a single
at some length, arguing that critic who summarized Lovecraft.
the critic (Edmund Wilson)
did a reasonably accurate
summary of Lovecraft, it was https://www.thereadingexperience.net/tre/an-elaborate-myth-graham-harman-on-lovecraft.html
unsympathetic, not wrong.
This is characteristic
Harman Logic-- use one
failure to claim no degree
of success is possible.
(But if you were to use one
of Harman's failures to
dismiss Harman, he'd argue
that that's no fair.)
The argument against
summary is reminiscent
of something I've seen
from a Freud apologist
"No reality can be immediately recently...
translated into representations
of any sort." THE_ANTI_FREUD_CREW
"Immediately"? WTF?
"Reality itself is weird because How about
reality itself is incommensurable "approximately"?
with any attempt to represent or
measure it."
Or maybe Harman is weird
because he thinks so.
It does seem that Harman is
asserting there's no way to write
about anything and using that to
prove there's no way to write about
anything (and why this doesn't
apply to Harman writing about
writing about things is left as an
"Lovecraft is aware of this exercise).
difficulty to an exemplary
degree, ..."
You know, all those crazed narrators
driven insane by their encounters
with the indiscombobulatable from the
beyondoidal? That's what Harman's
"... and through his talking about here.
assistance we may be able
to learn about how to say Lovecraft liked to write speculatively
something without saying about things underlying the fabric of
it--" reality that are beyond human
understanding or perception. One
Well, there's certainly criticism of all this might be "why
lots of stuff Lovecraft speculate?". There's the example of
left unsaid. He said quantum mechanics for anyone interested
quite a bit about the in learning about it: it makes no damn
unsayable, really... sense to us, and yet it's indisputably
kind of like true. But then, unlike the elder gods,
Wittgenstein. we can successfully learn to dance around
it's apparent irrationality if we try.
".. or in philosophical
terms, how to love wisdom It doesn't seem to turn us into
without having it. into gibbering madmen devolving into
subhuman entities with a terrible
Harman likes to fear of seafood and foreigners...
think he's in the
Socratic tradition. But I wouldn't want to be
dogmatic on that point, it
Socrates liked to demonstrate might explain some things.
that we don't know jack and
Harman wants to argue we (Like the fact that
can't know jack. Harman can get published.)
"When it comes to grasping
reality, illusion and innuendo LOVECRAFT
are the best we can do."
Yup. Just like the IPCC reports.
A bunch of illusion and innuendo.
Can't imagine why anyone takes it
seriously.
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