Manuel DeLanda, Graham Harman: The

Rise of Realism
Mark Losoncz
Title: The Rise of Realism
Author: Manuel DeLanda, Graham Harman
Publisher: Polity
Release Date: 2017
Format: Paperback €19.02
Pages: 240
Reviewed by: Mark Losoncz (Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade / Novi Sad)

This book presents an enthusiastic dialogue between two contemporary philosophers, Manuel
DeLanda and Graham Harman. Neo-materialism and object-oriented ontology face each other as
equally inspiring conceptual approaches to the key issues of new realism. One might have thought
that DeLanda’s philosophy of dynamic relations and intensities, strongly influenced by Deleuzian
concepts, can only be interpreted as a devoted rival of Harman’s philosophy which is very clear,
in a partially neo-Aristotelian manner, about the priority of individual-substantial objects. But as
the dialogue evolves, we have to realize that things are much more complicated.

So, what binds the interlocutors of this book together? First of all, they needed a common enemy
to unite them. Indeed, the enemy has no clear outline – it embraces as different currents and
thinkers as social constructivism and Alain Badiou, culturalist pseudo-Marxism and Karen Barad.
According to DeLanda and Harman, they can all be brought together under the flag of anti-
realism, either because of the denial of a mind-independent cosmos or because of treating human
subjectivity as an ontologically outsized (co-)creator of the world. While DeLanda and Harman
sometimes present realism as a heretic alternative with respect to mainstream continental trends,
they also offer another perspective according to which 20th century continental philosophy can be
re-read, at least partially, as a series of realist tendencies. For example, it is claimed that Deleuze
is a continental realist, that Husserl’s concept of the object as an invariant form can serve as an
inspiration for contemporary realism and that Heidegger’s tool-analysis has also serious realist
consequences. Roughly speaking, in continental philosophy, realism is both an excommunicated
pseudo-problem and the hidden message of its exciting underground. What is more, Harman does
not hesitate to mention the fellow travelers: the speculative realists, Maurizio Ferraris and Markus
Gabriel.
Although DeLanda and Harman are careful to emphasize their shared rejection of anti-realism
throughout the book, the lines between their respective philosophies are not blurred. Already in
the first chapter it is obvious that DeLanda’s neo-materialism cannot easily be reconciled with
Harman’s “realism without materialism” which denounces materialism as a reductionist approach,
being unable to account for immaterial entities such as fictional characters in novels. From the
viewpoint of Harman’s flat ontology, “materialism has often led to premature decisions about
what should and should not count as real.” (15) In contrast to this position, DeLanda proposes a
material-energetic-informationism that “involves a rejection of entities that transcend the world of
patterned matter-energy” (16). This immanentist model gives fiction a less mystifying status by
defining it as an emergent property, or, more precisely, as a level of emergence. The first chapter
of the book is valuable for several reasons. In particular, it is useful for clarifying the difference
between materialism and realism, for being critical of various reductionist approaches
(“undermining” / micro-reductionism and “overmining” / macro-reductionism) and for
thematizing the dilemma of aprioristic and aposterioristic thinking in philosophy. Furthermore,
there is an interesting debate on Aristotelian essences and forms, Harman being sympathetic to
these concepts and DeLanda rejecting them on the grounds of his historical-genetic theory of
singularities. The critique of Marxism is arguably the worst part of this chapter, especially when
DeLanda suggests that Marxists have a “special brand in which a priori schemes of synthesis (the
negation of the negation) form the core of their position” (12). It seems almost superfluous to say
that this extremely abstract use of the term “Marxism” ignores the rich diversity of classical and
contemporary Marxisms, with special regard to those that are highly critical of dialectical
categories and the Hegelian legacy of Marx.

The second chapter relies upon Lee Braver’s 2007 book A Thing of This World: A History of
Continental Anti-Realism in order to make precise distinctions between realist and anti-realist
positions. The key issues are the mind-dependence of the world, truth as correspondence, the
possibility of a complete description of the world, the possibility of true and untrue statements, the
relationship between knowledge and the knowable, and the claim according to which the human
subject has a fixed character. DeLanda and Harman complete Braver’s list with three more
problems. The first concerns the question whether the relation of the human subject with the
world should be considered a privileged relation for philosophy, the second is whether subjective
experience is linguistically structured and the third is about the world as a holistic entity in which
everything is inextricably related. One of the most valuable aspects of this chapter is DeLanda’s
and Harman’s insistence on defining the concepts of relation and relationism as precisely as
possible. While Harman criticizes Whitehead, Latour and Barad for conceptualizing relations
without properly taking into consideration the relata that are prior to them, DeLanda emphasizes
that we should not accept “intrinsic relations that determine the very identity of what they relate”,
but only extrinsic relations (32). The other aspect that deserves special mention is the
interlocutors’ agreement with respect to the impossibility of a complete description of the world.
According to the conclusions of object-oriented ontology, Harman claims that “things in the world
cannot be converted into bundles of accurate descriptions” (44), that is to say, there is always and
necessarily a withdrawal of real objects. On the other hand, by relying on insights from the
philosophy of chemistry and fuzzy logic, DeLanda focuses upon the problem of emergence, i.e. of
new properties that cannot be reduced to the interactions of already existing entities and that can
never be exhaustively described.
The third chapter is by far the richest one. DeLanda and Harman carry on with the topic of
realism, but this time by focusing more on the main statements of object-oriented ontology and
neo-materialism. It is almost impossible to summarize this chapter as it ranges from the concept of
possibility, through the critique of reductionisms, to the ontological status of objects. We would
like to underline two important aspects: one concerns essences, and the other is about dispositions.
With a strong background in Aristotelian-Zubírian ontology, Harman argues that essences are
“salvageable” and that otherwise it would not be possible to interpret objects as consistent entities.
Whereas DeLanda claims that the concept of essence is illegitimate and unnecessary, the
interlocutors seem to make a compromise by concluding that there is haeccity (“thisness”) that
makes objects identifiable. In this context, DeLanda rightly insists on the fact that, according to
Deleuzian ontology, the virtual is segmented into distinct actual objects as products. There is
another extremely exciting debate on dispositions, i.e. on capacities to affect and being affected.
Harman refuses to put dispositions into things and comes to the conclusion that dispositions
should be treated as new compound entities that result from interactions between objects.
DeLanda elaborates his philosophy of tendencies and capacities in details, with a special emphasis
on defining the identity of actual objects as a combination of actual properties and virtual
dispositions. In short, DeLanda suggests that we should account for the enduring identity of
objects “by the mechanisms of emergence behind the historical genesis and day-to-day
maintenance of an object’s identity” (88).

The fourth chapter deals with the question of cognition and experience. The interlocutors seem to
agree that “epistemology” is a bad term, either because it implies a dualist ontology that privileges
the relation between humans and everything else, or because epistemological debates tend to
ignore many kinds of “rightness of fit”, e.g. the know-how dimension of experience. Accordingly,
this chapter is very critical of various scientist epistemologies (empiricism, mathematic
reductionism, etc.). Harman explains his approach to cognition by stressing the point that certain
essential aspects of objects are necessarily withheld or withdrawn and that our access to objects is
always mediated by processes of translation. In light of this, he presents his view on the difference
between real and sensual objects. DeLanda’s concept of cognition resonates with the object-
oriented approach only partially: he emphasizes that “we can use the possibility of future novelty,
the imperfect record of past traces, the spatial and temporal scale-dependence of the world’s
presentations … to spell … out [the withdrawal of objects]” (103). Similarly to Harman,
DeLanda’s theory gives importance to the mechanisms of transformation between real objects and
our experiental patterns, but with more attention to the biologic origins of embodied cognition and
selective attentional processes. The common ground in this chapter is the insight that absolute
knowledge is impossible, either because of the fundamental withdrawal of objects, or because of
the open-ended character of nature and the untraceable aspects the past.

The last chapter articulates conceptual dilemmas with respect to time, space and philosophy of
science. Harman equates “real time” with changes in space and defines sensual time as a relational
entity that is derivative of the succession of objects. While he seems to accept the irreversibility of
sensual time, on the other hand, he claims: “if we consider time as belonging to the real itself,
then I guess I’m not a realist about time” (119). DeLanda is strongly opposed to this non-realist
philosophy of sensual time and he emphasizes the irreducibility of real time, i.e. the succession of
causes and effects by relying upon insights from the theory of relativity. DeLanda also offers a
very useful analysis of the concept of intensity. After a longish debate on Latour, the interlocutors
debate on the role of knowledge, semantics, falsification and the definition of truth. Harman
summarizes the difference between their respective philosophies as follows: 1. while DeLanda
privileges dynamic entities, Harman gives importance to the “inertia” of objects; 2. in contrast to
the emphasis on the philosophy of science (especially on the philosophy of chemistry) in
DeLanda’s philosophy, Harman’s philosophy seems closer to the arts (and for Harman “the
exemplar is aesthetics”); 3. while object-oriented ontology focuses on individual-substantial
entities, DeLandian neo-materialism offers a detailed conceptualization of outside factors such as
phase-spaces and attractors; 4. while Harman puts emphasis on formal causes, for DeLanda it is
more important to clarify the role of final causes. DeLanda completes this list with his critique of
the object-oriented concept of fundamental withdrawal and Harman’s denial of real time.