From Madrid: Speculations is out (and first networkology article)!
Hi all,
First issue of SPECULATIONS: The Journal of Speculative Realism, has just come out! Woohoo!
Included in this, along with what seems like a lot of other cool texts I´m psyched to read, is the first part of my work in progress, Networkologies: Towards a Philosophy of Networks – A Manifesto. This article is the first part of the book in progress (click the link to see the full prospectus), and is more than anything else a snapshot outline of what is to come. I don´t think the full power of the thing gets off the ground till the second part, so that reading the first part is mostly appetizer, a lot of definitions and rough sketches, but necessary.
Here´s the link to Speculations: Issue No. 1.
Many thanks go to Paul Ennis and Thomas Gokey for their hard work on making this journal a reality. Its one thing to say there needs to be a journal of this type, and a whole differnt thing to put in all the enormous time and effort to make it come together. Its all really impressive, and seems poised to really create a movement. The issue looks professional, smart, and just a wonderful indicator of things to come. Damn exciting, on so many levels.
I´m psyched to read through it all as soon as I can find a printer out here in Madrid land . . . and yes, I relocated from Barcelona to Madrid after two weeks in Barcelona. Now that I´m two weeks into Madrid, well, contrary to what seems the popular opinion, I have enjoyed Madrid much, much more. Go figure.
In regard to the Networkologies article, there are unfortunately some minor glitches with the formatting in the Networkologies article (doh!, a punctuation error on the first page, some issues with the typeface, and a missing half-sentence midway through which really muddies the explanation of hypercombinatories), but considering how difficult it is to get formatting on something like this (there were several conversations going on about this!), its all pretty cool, and I´m pretty psyched. But if anything´s unclear because of the glitches, just email me.
Anyway, will be in Spain for another week. Its been refreshing to take a bit of a break from blogging, though some ideas have piled up, but I´m just sorta taking mental notes. Would prefer to blog with my books around me, you know?
But have done some very cool pleasure research readings, including Frances Yates´´Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition´and ´The Western Esoteric Traditions´by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Both pretty solid scholarship. Of course, WHY I´m reading these is a whole different story, my interest is semiotic, and some future blog posts will get into that . . .
But its been really great to clear the palette for a while, cause I was working on the Networkologies book project non-stop for about six months, and its been great to just travel, work on my spanish, do pleasure research, at most prepare for classes a bit, but not do anything related to the book for about a month. Hopefully that means returning to it in August with some fresh eyes.
But for now, just psyched about Speculations – a great big woohoo for all involved!
Networkologies 
I had the pleasure of reading Yates’ “Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition” last year when I was asked to sit in on a friend’s reading course (he’s writing an interdisciplinary PhD on the history and philosophy of magic). Have you read Culianu’s “Eros and Magic in the Renaissance”? I found it much more theoretical which made it a nice companion to Yates’ historical style, as well as contributing some valuable information to the period as it covers not only Bruno, but discusses Agrippa, Ficino and Pico della Mirandola in some detail as well.
Oh, cool, thanks for the recommendation, I haven´t heard of culianu´s work, but I´ll be sure to check it out. Before I left for traveling this summer I read Bloom´s really excellent ´Kaballah and Criticism´, and I remember thinking it made sense of so much of this for me, but its at home, and I completely forget now how he did that!