I agree with Aaron here. If the goal of the new critique is to dispense with the critical framework of what has been considered critical works so far, then Laruelle is the nearest model we can utilize perhaps to inaugurate a new critical activity, a critique-without-criticism. This is of course dependent on where we are taking Laruelle’s own critical interventions. There is a danger in Laruelle to ignore historical alternatives to, say, capitalism, which have been greatly responsible for the very materialities of philosophical hallucination that he condemns. And yet Laruelle comes at a precise time when these hallucinations are no longer concealed within the discipline of philosophy but have been in effect saturating the culture industry. This makes him a powerful critic of capitalism at the same time of the very poverty of philosophy that flourishes on a concealment of Being (if Being is the right term for the over-all hallucinatory form of materiality that reflects the circular decisional structure of its speculation). The question of how it compares with OOO alternative, vis-a-vis the undeniable hold of Capital on humanity, I think boils down to the argument whether Laruelle also views Capital as a hallucinatory material rather than a real force of history. This is crucial.To view capital and its historical consequences as neutral objectified materials (because they are hallucinatory to which all forms of visioning/critiquing History are condemned, much like all forms of representing the Real are) is already to deem it impossible for the humanity-in-the-last-instance to even view itself as humanity, that is, in the last instance with a task to solve. I take it that this ‘Laruellean last-instance’ cant take any other form except as a historical challenge.
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