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DeLanda’s ontology: assemblage and realism

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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

  1. DeLanda (2002, p. 4).

  2. Personal communication, January 30, 2007.

  3. Zizek and Daly (2004, p. 26).

  4. Zizek and Daly (2004, pp. 25–26).

  5. Zizek and Daly (2004, p. 97).

  6. Meillassoux (2008).

  7. Whitehead (1979).

  8. DeLanda (2002, pp. 9–10).

  9. Bhaskar (1997).

  10. DeLanda (2002, p. 32).

  11. DeLanda (2006, pp. 27–28).

  12. DeLanda (2006, p. 21).

  13. DeLanda (2006, pp. 28–29).

  14. DeLanda (2006, p. 29).

  15. DeLanda (2006, p. 21).

  16. Kripke (1996).

  17. DeLanda (2006, p. 12).

  18. DeLanda (2006, p. 12).

  19. DeLanda (2006, p. 14).

  20. DeLanda (2006, p. 22).

References

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  • Zizek, Slavoj, and Glyn Daly. 2004. Conversations with Zizek. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, American University in Cairo, 113 Qasr al-Aini, Cairo, Egypt

    Graham Harman

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  1. Graham Harman
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Correspondence to Graham Harman.

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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

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