This text includes a summary/presentation of TETRALOGOS, the new (2019) book by François Laruelle, followed by an examination of his formula for a « general science fiction » and a proposal to make this formula more generic.
Abstract
(1) some general considerations regarding the amplitude and inventiveness of Laruelle’s research program.
(2) static presentation of the book, its structure, content, and themes.
(3) dynamic presentation of the book, its movements and forces, its conceptual drama, and its relationship with some defining features of the genre of science fiction.
(4) we examine the three criteria for a general or non-standard science fiction that Laruelle proposes, amounting to a formula for the re-foundation of the genre of science fiction.
(5) We test his hypotheses by examining some potentially falsifying examples of SF.
(6) contains a proposition for an extended formula for a general or non-standard SF.
(7) we conclude with the concept of an inventive farewell to the philosophers who have been our educators.
The key word for this new book by Laruelle is amplitude, which describes the aim of the book to englobe the whole of human experience, its sites and its stages, freed from the confines of philosophy, reaching from the Earth to the Universe, from the Cavern to the Stars, and from Birth to Messianity.
To attain this goal he must make philosophy far more inventive than it has become.
These two words also describe the underlying values of science fiction.
Text available here:
Also here:
https://www.academia.edu/40542890/LARUELLE_AND_RADICAL_SCIENCE_FICTION
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336304335_LARUELLE_AND_RADICAL_SCIENCE_FICTION
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After reading your text yesterday, I had a dream of fitting Adrian Tchaikovsky’s WALKING TO ALDEBARAN into the schema. This story, only a couple 100 pages long, is about humans and aliens encountering each other as they explore an alien labyrinth that seems to twist through space and time. Hint: The protagonist is named Gary Rendell (I didn’t get it until near the end 😉
Thanks, Mark
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Thanks, I have the book, but haven’t read it yet. So it will be my next read!
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Hi Terry, just wanted to add – as I continue my slide toward becoming calamari! (reference to the Verso cover of Slavoj ZizeK’s THE INDIVISIBLE REMAINDER – but also AT’s CHILDREN OF RUNI !), that one problem with Z’s and Laruelle’s « quantum mechanics » is that it’s not generic enough. (I was trying to read Z’s « Quantum Physics With Lacan » in the above volume.) What I mean is that even physicists cannot agree on what quantum mechanics is, aside from a set of General Relativity, mathematical tools. That is,, forcing out the Lacanism, without degrading into Scientism, what is REALLY meant by « quantum mechanics » – at least in a Philosophical sense, is BACK REACTION. See Sabine Hossenfelder’s 10/16 post « Dark Matter Nightmare », at her blog with that name http://backreaction.blogspot.com/, which explains the concept quite clearly (along with a comment noting how these generic problems apply to biochemistry as well as cosmology)
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Hello Mark, I have just finished the book, and it was interesting, but I didn’t get the Gary Rendell clue that you talked about, till the end.
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I finished WALKING TO ALDEBARAN and posted this review on my other blog: https://xenoswarm.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/walking-to-aldebaran-portrait-of-the-sf-reader-as-astro-ambulist/. Thanks for the inspiration to at last sit down and read it. I wonder what you dreamt of as ways of fitting WTA into Laruelle’s schema?
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Stengers does write extensively on the history of quantum physics in Cosmopolitics 2. It’s interesting cos as u know Laruelle makes use of ‘superposition’. I am guessing that even if superposition was an artefact of a mathematical theory and had no physical reality it probably wouldn’t make a difference to him. After all it’s a philofiction??
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I think the physical reference is important for him in order to demarcate his non-philosophical approach, which maintains a connection with the real, from a philosophical approach, which remains purely self-contained (as he claims Badiou’s mathematism does).
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Yes, altho of course it depends on how we use the term ‘physical’….presumablly as ‘mind-independent’….something that exists regardless of what we think about it…
If superposition is a theoretical artefact…it seems strange that non standard phil would need it…to pass to the generic…
It does seem like hook he hangs himself on…the quantum turn
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