A Single Day of Solitude
Reading Samantha Harvey’s Orbital for an Object-Oriented Literary Geography
Keywords:
speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, literary spatiality, relational literary geography, aesthetics, Samantha HarveyAbstract
This paper offers a reading of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital (2023) in support of an ‘object-orientated’ literary geography. Informed by the wider movement of speculative realism but drawing heavily on Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) I provide a broad outline for a literary geography that recognises space as an emergent property of objects. Space in OOO is defined as the tensions between a ‘withdrawn’ real object and the ‘sensual qualities’ involved in the relations that exist with other objects. Focussing on the objects that are texts, the absence of relations is a fundamental theme. This is explored through a reading of Orbital: Harvey’s novel explores the disconnection and dislocation of life on the International Space Station, this quality being the inevitable concomitant of real objects withdrawing from other objects (including but not limited to human beings). Orbital’s narrative accordingly refuses the anthropocentrism inherent in the idea that the world can only be perceived as a correlative of human perception or knowledge. Readers can nevertheless relate to Orbital because spatiality is played out in the aesthetic experience of momentarily crossing the gulf between real objects and their sensual qualities. The mediating role of art, including the reading of imaginative literature, is emphasized as a way of alluding to ‘real objects’ beyond the human, the inherent limitations of consciousness and cognition matched by aesthetic attunement to the otherness of reality. Literary spatiality is thus enacted in both the withdrawal of real objects in literary texts and in their aesthetic allure.References
Alworth, D. (2016) Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Anderson, J. (2014) Page and Place: Ongoing Compositions of Plot. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Anderson, J. and Saunders, A. (2015) ‘Relational Literary Geographies: Co-producing Page and Place.’ Literary Geographies, 1(2), 15-19.
Baumgartner, B.D. (2012) ‘Potentiality of the Present: Exploring Speculative Realism Versus Spatial Theory.’ Human Geography, 5(1), 36-41.
Bergmann, L. (2016) ‘Toward Speculative Data: “Geographic Information” for Situated Knowledges, Vibrant Matter, and Relational Spaces.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(6), pp. 971-989.
Bogost, I. (2012) Alien Phenomenology, or What it’s Like to be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Brassier, R., Grant, I.H., Meillassoux, Q. and Harman, G. (2007) ‘Speculative Realism – Ray Brassier – Iain Hamilton Grant – Quentin Meillassoux – Graham Harman.’ Collapse III, 306-449.
Bryant, L.R. (2011) The Democracy of Objects. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.
Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. and Harman, G. (eds, 2011) The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: re.press.
Cazajous-Augé, C. (2025) ‘The Anthropocene Cosmic Sublime: Viewing the Earth from Space in Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital”.’ Ecozon@. European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 16(1), pp. 97-115.
Chin, G. (2022) ‘Magic Realism as Metaphysics: Murakami Haruki and the Resistance of Reality Itself.’ Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne deLittérature Comparée, 49(1-2), pp. 33-52.
Foucault, M. (2002a) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (2002b) The Archaeology of Knowledge. Abingdon: Routledge.
Gottlieb, E. (2016) Romantic Realities: Speculative Realism and British Romanticism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hamilton, G. (2015) The World of Failing Machines: Speculative Realism and Literature. Winchester: Zero Books.
Harman, G. (2005) Guerilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. Chicago: Open Court Publishing.
Harman, G. (2007) ‘On Vicarious Causation,’ Collapse II, pp.187-221. [Online] [Accessed 22 October 2025] https://community.stjohnscollege.edu/file/chapter/chapter-readings/ harmanvicarious-causation.pdf
Harman, G. (2011a) ‘Response to Shaviro’, in Bryant, L., Srnicek, N. and Harman, G. (eds) The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: re.press, pp. 291-303.
Harman, G. (2011b) The Quadruple Object. Winchester: Zero Books.
Harman, G. (2012a) ‘The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer: Object-Oriented Literary Criticism.’ New Literary History, 43(2), pp. 183-203.
Harman, G. (2012b) Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. Winchester: Zero Books.
Harman, G. (2016) Dante’s Broken Hammer: The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Metaphysics of Love. London: Repeater Books.
Harman, G. (2017) Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. London: Penguin.
Harman, G. (2019) Art and Objects. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Harman, G. (2020) ‘Response to Nathan Coombs.’ In Ennis, P.J. (ed) Speculations I. Santa Barbara: Punctum Press, pp. 145-152.
Harvey, S. (2023) Orbital. London: Vintage.
Hones, S. (2024) ‘Relational Literary Geographies.’ In Alexander, N. and Cooper, D. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 30-39.
Iser, W. (1978) The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Meillassoux, Q. (2009) After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. New York: Continuum.
Morton, T. (2013a) Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality. University of Michigan: Open Humanities Press.
Morton, T. (2013b) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Morton, T. (2021) Spacecraft. New York: Bloomsbury.
Peterle, G. and Rossetto, T. (2023) ‘There is no space, there is no time, there are only objects: the onto-cartography or Richard McGuire’s Here.’ Literary Geographies, 9(1), pp. 50-68
Poposki, Z. (2024) ‘Knowing Holbein’s Objects: An Object-Oriented-Ontology Analysis of The Ambassadors.’ Open Philosophy, 7(1), 20240032.
Radić, G. (2025) ‘OOO: The Inner Surplus of Meaning.’ Landezine, 7 April.
Rogers, D. (2018) ‘Assemblage Theory and the Ontological Limitations of Speculative Realism.’ Dialogues in Human Geography, 8(2), pp. 244-247.
Rossetto, T. (2019) Object-Oriented Cartography: Maps as Things. Abingdon: Routledge.
Shaviro, S. (2014) The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Thurgill, J. (2021) ‘Literary Geography and the Spatial Hinge.’ Literary Geographies, 7(2), pp. 152-156.
Willems, B. (2017) Speculative Realism and Science Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Williams, N, and Keating, T. (eds, 2022) Speculative Geographies: Ethics, Technologies, Aesthetics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
