Lovely bit from the preface to Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: VOLUME ONE The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy:
Stuck between capitalist techno-manipulation and its irrationalist discontents, seesawing between the twin big Others of the nature of scientism and the God of superstition within the constraining global space of a neo-liberal economy, humanity is stranded in the waking nightmare of a disgustingly reactionary and horrifically hopeless period of history.
Thus, the main metaphysical task by which Johnston critiques Zizek (earlier work) and Lacan, Badiou, and Meillassoux (in this book) concerns the extent to which they can develop a non-scientistic naturphilosophie that does not fall into superstition. In this context I find particularly interesting Johnston's development of Lacan's claim that extant naturalisms almost always tend to even more strongly embody what they take to be wrong about superstition. There is a lot in here that challenges both naturalists and anti-naturalists, as these debates have been working out over the last century or so.
Here (hat tip dmf) is a really nice interview where Johnston describes to Peter Gratton the trilogy and his conception of transcendental materialism. If anyone has any time, I'd be interested to see in the comments what people think of the interview, especially since I'm still early in the first episode and relatively new to much of the relevant background material.
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