Speculative Realism

Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy, also known as post-Continental philosophy, that defines itself loosely by its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of post-Kantian philosophy, which it terms correlationism. It takes its name from a conference held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in April 2007, which featured Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux, with Alberto Toscano as moderator. Credit for the name is generally given to Brassier, though Meillassoux had already used the term speculative materialism for his own position. A second conference followed at UWE Bristol in 2009, and a third event at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010 was a symposium on object-oriented ontology.