ABSTRACT
Like new materialists, speculative realist thinkers react against the discursive excess that has reigned in critical theory since the 1960s. It is true that new materialists also fight against the same theoretical frame, the same reduction of the world to the humanity-plus-language duo. With the object-oriented ontology that many speculative realism thinkers share, it is the exact opposite. Refusing any kind of ontological hierarchy can be identified as a materialist operation. Ontology, that is to say rational discourse whose goal is to define the essence of things, gets rid of the hierarchy of beings to become the hierarch. More precisely, an authentic materialist operation will try to get rid of the ontological coating to emancipate existence from the transcendent, idealist power of ontology. The materialist lesson that speculative realism and object-oriented ontology offer is that language is also not all-powerful.
