The Autumn term Visual Cultures Public Programme uses these latest developments in philosophy and art as a point of departure for a series of talks from thinkers and artists that might be said to connect with, parallel, pre-date or critique what has come to be known as the speculative turn.

Globe, global, globalizing, globalization, globality: all these words have the same Latin root: globus: round mass, sphere, ball. The main characteristic of this etymological root and of its derivatives is the assumption that we are dealing with an object that can be articulated as such. But what are the limits of this object? Does it have limits? And how do we relate to it? This conversation explores the work of one of the most prominent thinker of globalization today: Jean-Luc Nancy.

Within the theoretical humanities there has recently been a resurgence of interest in objects and objectivity often pitched against those ontologies that are more relational. Of course, it might be said that an interest in objects has always been a concern of art history and practice (not least contemporary practice) and that ideas of a relational aesthetics have, for some time now, been a dominant trend in art theory.

The contemporary theorization of art inhabits a series of often interlocking positions concerning the virtues or vices of objects, relations, and immanence. The key term is immanence, which slides between a militant excess and the untranscendable horizon of capitalist value. Analysing the tensions of immanence - between theological transcendence and immersion, between relation and dissolution - requires an analysis of the attempt to disembed objects, relations, and immanence from the horizon...

Can those of us who dwell in 21st-century metropolises learn anything from Freuds famous child patient Hans? Hans develops a phobia of horses and the street. Freud diagnoses a deviance in sexual development. Lacan detects a reluctance to enter into the symbolic order. Flix Guattari instead celebrates Hanss phobia as a pragmatic political escape from an Oedipalization which serves capitalism by forming deterritorialized workers who are also adaptable consumers. For Guattari, Hans exemplifies...

In this lecture, Professor Shaviro will explore post-continuity styles in recent American cinema, and consider the ways in which these styles can be understood in relation to contemporary philosophies of Speculative Realism.