The London Object

Étienne Balibar writes that today we are at the end of capitalism. This is not because capitalism has run its course or has met an irresistible force, but because there can be no purer form of capitalism than the one we have today. Taking seriously the idea that this strain of capitalism has not only seized the urban environment but is the urban environment, works by Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair, Penelope Lively, Peter Ackroyd, and J.G. Ballard are read as representative of a loosely allied group of London writers who have anticipated, critiqued, and offered up various avenues of resistance to the deleterious effects of this most vigorous strain of capitalism. Writing on the city by charting a politics of reconnection to the real that necessarily unsettles the epistemological and ontological ground upon which both modernity and capitalism sit, this stable of writers makes clear the ways in which the sheer materiality of the urban environment profoundly influences the being and thinking of individuals. In so doing, these writers produce works which when read together give the coordinates of an altermodernity that might just allow capitalism to reach its final conclusion.

This book argues that certain works by Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair, Penelope Lively, Peter Ackroyd, and J.G. Ballard constitute the coordinates of an altermodernity that might bring to an end the most deleterious effects and affects of today's hyper-aggressive strain of capitalism.

In the modern lexicon, ‘object’ refers to an entity that is materially constituted, spatially defined, and functionally determined. In contrast, the Latin word ‘fantasia’ has, since antiquity, referred to an apparition or the ability to imagine something that could be equally an object, an image, or a concept. This tension prompts further inquiry into the interrelations and differences between the experience of tangible objects (their perception and handling) and the creation of new objects (their conception and formation). What correlations exist between object fantasies, the self-consciousness of subjects, and the concrete and imagined conditions of human beings’ social lives? By addressing this question, this interdisciplinary book opens new perspectives in the field of object studies.

Who knew today could be the last. An unknown object impacts in a remote Moroccan town. Nothing prepared us for what happened next. As cities fall, continents shift and the human race struggles to exist, Vivienne Wright must fight her demons as well as the people charged with the survival of humankind. With no defence, and no way to detect where it may impact next, their only hope is to hide and wait out the mysterious object. Will Vivienne’s belief in a mute young woman salvage what’s left of humanity? Do we even deserve to survive? “I am responsible for ending our world. Nothing can save us. When the end comes, believe in the afterlife for there will be nothing left here to believe in. It’s coming. We knew it would. We knew it couldn’t be stopped.”

Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America explores how close, collaborative looking can discern the traces of contact, exchange, and movement of objects and give them a life and political power in complex cross-cultural histories. Red River coats, prints of colonial places and peoples, Indigenous-made dolls, and an Englishwoman's collection provide case studies of art and material culture that correct and give nuance to global and imperial histories. The result of a collaborative research process involving Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributors, this book looks closely at the circumstances of making, use, and circulation of these objects: things that supported and defined both Indigenous resistance and colonial and imperial purposes. Contributors re-envision the histories of northern North America by focusing on the lives of things flowing to and from this vast region between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, showing how material culture is a critical link that tied this diverse landscape to the wider world. An original perspective on the history of northern North American peoples grounded in things, Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America provides a key analytical and methodological lens that exposes the complexity of cultural encounters and connections between local and global communities.

What is reality, really? Are humans more special or important than the non-human objects we perceive? How does this change the way we understand the world? We humans tend to believe that things are only real in as much as we perceive them, an idea reinforced by modern philosophy, which privileges us as special, radically different in kind from all other objects. But as Graham Harman, one of the theory's leading exponents, shows, Object-Oriented Ontology rejects the idea of human specialness: the world, he states, is clearly not the world as manifest to humans. At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that objects - whether real, fictional, natural, artificial, human or non-human - are mutually autonomous. In this brilliant new introduction, Graham Harman lays out the history, ideas and impact of Object-Oriented Ontology, taking in everything from art and literature, politics and natural science along the way. Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc, Los Angeles. A key figure in the contemporary speculative realism movement in philosophy and for his development of the field of object-oriented ontology, he was named by Art Review magazine as one of the 100 most influential figures in international art.