The Specter of 1966, or Speculative Realism and the Phantom of Deconstruction

Certain events have become landmarks in the history of contemporary thought. The conference held in October 1966 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was one such event: with Derrida's contribution entitled "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," as Benoît Peeters writes in his biography of the philosopher, "the whole programme of deconstruction was set out" (Derrida: A Biography 168). Forty years later, in April 2007, a workshop held at Goldsmiths College in London brought together Quentin Meillassoux and three other participants under the banner of "speculative realism," an event whose impact has been compared with that of deconstruction at the Baltimore conference.¹

This is one version or sequence of the legend, of the legendary history of contemporary French thought, according to which speculative realism would have recently taken over from poststructuralism. (Or, if we prefer to adopt the maximalist version of the legend: speculative realism has overtaken all post-Kantian philosophy and its supposed "correlationism.")

The problem with this legend is that, on closer inspection, it does not hold up. I am not talking about its media impact (which functions perfectly well), but rather about its philosophical mechanics. Because it seems to me that speculative realism is still haunted by the specter of many of the motifs and concepts of deconstruction, and it is far from even beginning to take this spectral presence into account. I will refer to three indications of this spectral proximity, which will serve as a preamble or program for a debate to come: first, the remarkable absence of Derrida's name in After Finitude (although the book covers the entire history of post-Kantian philosophy); second, the unsettling—and unquestioned—proximity of the notion of the archefossil (with which After Finitude opens) and the Derridean arche-trace; third, the notion of spectrality itself, which plays an important role not only in Derrida's thought, but also, surprisingly, in Meillassoux's own theologico-political speculations.

1

Derrida's name is an absence all the more glaring in After Finitude, as the book produces great movements of philosophical convergence or agglomeration that fall under the heading of the correlationism it intends to overcome. Thus we find matching pairs, such as the coupling of Wittgenstein and Heidegger under the banner of a correlationist discourse which "makes no positive pronouncements whatsoever about the absolute," and "confines itself to thinking the limits of thought" (41). But we also come across veritable lists inventorying different ways of "absolutizing the correlation" and indexing the different "forms of subjectivity" which are thereby "hypostatized" in the affirmation that "nothing can be unless it is some form of relation-to-the-world": "Hegelian Mind; Schopenhauer's Will; the Will (or Wills) to Power in Nietzsche; perception loaded with memory in Bergson; Deleuze's Life, etc." (37).

But in these grand philosophical maneuvers where we see the style—and often the strength—of Meillassoux's thought, deconstruction is always missing. One could object that it is at least mentioned, and even explicitly confronted in some of his other texts. But then it is in contexts that are either far from the philosophical ambition or consistency of After Finitude (I am specifically thinking of an interview where we find the same sort of list or inventory, and the same sort of nomenclature which this time groups Freud, Marx, Derrida, and Lacan)²; or, it is found in a manuscript whose status remains problematic (to the extent that, though unpublished, it has been widely circulated), namely, Meillassoux's doctoral thesis entitled L'Inexistence divine.³

2

I will return to the manuscript of L'Inexistence divine without delay. Despite its impublication (if I dare say so), it should be the point of departure for any attempt to explain the relation of spectral proximity connecting speculative realism (or "speculative materialism," as Meillassoux prefers to say⁴) and deconstruction. A spectrality whose second sign, indication, or symptom is the notion of the arche-fossil, which is central to After Finitude.

Certainly, at first glance and despite the apparent...