Based on Donna J. Haraway’s “situated knowledges”, the lecture will focus on Alfred N. Whitehead’s understanding of speculation, combining philosophical-historical and contemporary references. It will be about questions like: To what extent can we speak of Whitehead’s speculative metaphysics as a form of situated knowledge? What does metaphysics mean here and to what extent is it speculative? And to what extent can such speculation be a form of radical empiricism? The use is a pragmatic understanding of speculation and is intended to show that speculative thinking in the Whitehead/Jamesian sense is both empirical and situational.

Melanie Sehgal is junior professorship for literary studies, history of knowledge and media at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder and will represent the chair for cultural philosophy there in the summer semester 2018. Her doctorate was awarded in 2016 under the title Eine situierte Metaphysik. Empirism and Speculation published by William James and Alfred North Whitehead at Constance University Press.

The lecture will take place within the workshop “Feminist speculations with strange bedfellows”.