Sunday, January 31, 2010
Meillassoux reading group query
Tomorrow I am chairing a short meeting of the UCD-Trinity inter-departmental reading group. I'll be working off the short paper 'Time without becoming' since it manages to condense the major ideas of After Finitude quite well. I'll have a quick re-read later and post the notes. Is there anything readers think ought to be covered? The group will consist of analytic and continental types. At the very least I'll let people know what the reaction is.
Post Continental Voices
Just having a look over the second proofs of PCV at the moment. Should be all done by tomorrow and sent off. I have removed the links to the interviews for the moment. At some stage I'll be deleting the interviews. This being the internet one can always recover them but I think the longer and much improved interviews in the books should replace the blog interviews at some point.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
The Absent Danger
In response to Peter's questions in this post I posted the following comment which I just wanted to reproduce in case it had intrigued anyone else:
At least one problem with the paper is that it is disjointed - but it is a chopped up paper edited down to fit the timeslot and one part I did cut out was my broader explanation for why the ancestral could be considered an 'absent' danger - i.e. not a danger in the sense that technics is a danger for Heidegger but a danger in that it encourages thinking about a time with no relation to the task of thinking (the ontological difference i.e. interest in the ancestral is for Heidegger just another ontic enterprise). Discussing the ancestral would also be a way to sneak the natural attitude back in - Husserl discusses evolution along these lines (Heidegger would probably have cried if he'd been given a chance to read Dennett).
But yes why the link between technics and the ancestral? Well I do want mean anything more than how the technical is precisely what allows us to build up a picture of the ancestral so yes I do mean the rather mundane fact that it is technics that works to open up this 'time before being' (the tools are what now expand the horizon including a horizon that discloses a time that is not 'temporal' - in the being and time sense).
Of course I'm also intimating to the various traces of absence that are all over Heidegger - and this I owe to Derrida and so in footnotes (what is absent in my paper!) in the diss I tend to point that out as well.
To put it differently I accept with Heidegger that 'this is no longer the earth' that we dwell on but also that when I see the stars (and I never see them as such but a kind of deferred or delayed image of them) I do not see them as Heidegger did and I can't since the degree of knowledge I have (my realist inheritance) and he had access to as so radically different. But I think Heidegger had a feeling for what was to come on this point and so he only ever makes casual references to it so in that sense it is a kind of absent danger to come (and that for us has arrived).
As you can see this kind of discussion would have been a little bit out of place in a paper delivered to people who were not all into Heidegger and so I avoided dwelling on it too much - I did not want to alienate my audience with too much cryptic Heidegger chat!
At least one problem with the paper is that it is disjointed - but it is a chopped up paper edited down to fit the timeslot and one part I did cut out was my broader explanation for why the ancestral could be considered an 'absent' danger - i.e. not a danger in the sense that technics is a danger for Heidegger but a danger in that it encourages thinking about a time with no relation to the task of thinking (the ontological difference i.e. interest in the ancestral is for Heidegger just another ontic enterprise). Discussing the ancestral would also be a way to sneak the natural attitude back in - Husserl discusses evolution along these lines (Heidegger would probably have cried if he'd been given a chance to read Dennett).
But yes why the link between technics and the ancestral? Well I do want mean anything more than how the technical is precisely what allows us to build up a picture of the ancestral so yes I do mean the rather mundane fact that it is technics that works to open up this 'time before being' (the tools are what now expand the horizon including a horizon that discloses a time that is not 'temporal' - in the being and time sense).
Of course I'm also intimating to the various traces of absence that are all over Heidegger - and this I owe to Derrida and so in footnotes (what is absent in my paper!) in the diss I tend to point that out as well.
To put it differently I accept with Heidegger that 'this is no longer the earth' that we dwell on but also that when I see the stars (and I never see them as such but a kind of deferred or delayed image of them) I do not see them as Heidegger did and I can't since the degree of knowledge I have (my realist inheritance) and he had access to as so radically different. But I think Heidegger had a feeling for what was to come on this point and so he only ever makes casual references to it so in that sense it is a kind of absent danger to come (and that for us has arrived).
As you can see this kind of discussion would have been a little bit out of place in a paper delivered to people who were not all into Heidegger and so I avoided dwelling on it too much - I did not want to alienate my audience with too much cryptic Heidegger chat!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Quick reply to Levi on non-correlationist ethics
Levi has an interesting post up on non-correlationist ethics that I wanted to address since this keeps cropping in real-life discussions of SR I have had with people.
''Here the issue isn’t one of excluding the human, but of asking how the domain of value might be extended beyond the human, without humans being at the center, or all questions of value pertaining to nonhumans being questions about the relationship of humans to nonhumans''
First of all I agree, and this seems to be something we will always have to explain, non-correlationist ethics does not mean deflating the human lower than something else but deflating it us from an unwarranted vantage point that is already above so to speak. Meaning that one is levelling the playing field and not promoting the non-human ahead of humans. The point is that there is no ahead as such – merely a fabricated ahead and our goal would be to expose this fabrication for what it is. This requires nothing less than a hard slog through the tradition unpacking the complex background noise that fills up our tradition (this I think was Deleuze’s intention with his historical readings).
Levi further states:
''If one takes the non-correlationist route where ethico-politico questions are concerned, we need a deep meta-ethical inquiry into those concepts that are assumed by any and all ethical philosophies so far put forward.''
Indeed. We are nowhere near where we need to be for this to happen yet. We don’t even have the coordinates that would allow us to arrive at a non-correlationist ethics yet and yet we seem to be in an age when the intuition has been arrived at. For me the question is simply why this is the case? If one answers this then we are some way toward establishing a beginning point. I think the answer here is broad – certainly it belongs to the radical deflation of our status that has occurred outside philosophy…in the natural attitude for the most part [is this not the reason for Meillassoux’s power in chapter one of After Finitude?]. I do not mean here the Copernicus/Freud/Nietzsche trio of human of psychological-cosmological deflation but a hierarchical deflation that centres upon the issue of ethics – the Deleuzian-Derridean animal that is manifest and not scientific.
At this point Levi develops an ethical theory beyond my own weak understanding of ethics and certainly the comments leave me for dust so do check them out yourself.
''Here the issue isn’t one of excluding the human, but of asking how the domain of value might be extended beyond the human, without humans being at the center, or all questions of value pertaining to nonhumans being questions about the relationship of humans to nonhumans''
First of all I agree, and this seems to be something we will always have to explain, non-correlationist ethics does not mean deflating the human lower than something else but deflating it us from an unwarranted vantage point that is already above so to speak. Meaning that one is levelling the playing field and not promoting the non-human ahead of humans. The point is that there is no ahead as such – merely a fabricated ahead and our goal would be to expose this fabrication for what it is. This requires nothing less than a hard slog through the tradition unpacking the complex background noise that fills up our tradition (this I think was Deleuze’s intention with his historical readings).
Levi further states:
''If one takes the non-correlationist route where ethico-politico questions are concerned, we need a deep meta-ethical inquiry into those concepts that are assumed by any and all ethical philosophies so far put forward.''
Indeed. We are nowhere near where we need to be for this to happen yet. We don’t even have the coordinates that would allow us to arrive at a non-correlationist ethics yet and yet we seem to be in an age when the intuition has been arrived at. For me the question is simply why this is the case? If one answers this then we are some way toward establishing a beginning point. I think the answer here is broad – certainly it belongs to the radical deflation of our status that has occurred outside philosophy…in the natural attitude for the most part [is this not the reason for Meillassoux’s power in chapter one of After Finitude?]. I do not mean here the Copernicus/Freud/Nietzsche trio of human of psychological-cosmological deflation but a hierarchical deflation that centres upon the issue of ethics – the Deleuzian-Derridean animal that is manifest and not scientific.
At this point Levi develops an ethical theory beyond my own weak understanding of ethics and certainly the comments leave me for dust so do check them out yourself.
Phenomenology and the Ancestral Paper PDF
OK as promised here is a PDF of the paper delivered on Monday 25th.
Link.
As usual I am more than happy hear what people think about this paper. You can reach me at: ennis.paul@gmail.com
Of course there are clearly problems with this paper especially to what extent do I achieve my goal (I don’t and I promise too much at the beginning) and in particular the section on rationalism/Descartes needs to be fleshed out. The paper was delivered at a work in progress paper which exists here in Dublin to get a grip on limitations in a paper. A longer version of this paper will hopefully be published soon and it’s far more serious father constitutes the first chapter of my dissertation. If you want help regarding any of the references just let me know. They are cut here to make the paper easier to read in person but I have them for anyone wishing to use any quote elsewhere.
Link.
As usual I am more than happy hear what people think about this paper. You can reach me at: ennis.paul@gmail.com
Of course there are clearly problems with this paper especially to what extent do I achieve my goal (I don’t and I promise too much at the beginning) and in particular the section on rationalism/Descartes needs to be fleshed out. The paper was delivered at a work in progress paper which exists here in Dublin to get a grip on limitations in a paper. A longer version of this paper will hopefully be published soon and it’s far more serious father constitutes the first chapter of my dissertation. If you want help regarding any of the references just let me know. They are cut here to make the paper easier to read in person but I have them for anyone wishing to use any quote elsewhere.
Dundee Abstract Mark II
OK so here is is the new abstract which the organizers were kind enough to allow:
Phenomenology and the Ancestral
In this paper I will attempt to address the implications for
phenomenology raised by Quentin Meillassoux’s argument from
ancestrality as outlined in Après la finitude (2006). The argument
from ancestrality raises the aporia of the arche-fossil, a fossil that
indicates to a time anterior to givenness, and allows empirical
science to make realist claims about events anterior to life. Arguing
that correlationist thinking, that is any thinking that stresses the
correlation between thought and being, Meillassoux challenges
phenomenology to address the ‘time before being’ raising once again
the seemingly irreconcilable problem of the empirical and
transcendental levels. Recognizing that the crux of the issue for
Meillassoux is whether ancestral statements are either literal or
realist I will attempt to reach, with the tools of speculative
realism, an operative realm of activity that allows one to think about
the ancestral realm in its realist sense.
Of course this is similar to the paper I have here in Dublin but by March it will be radically different. I intend to address the extent to which one must decide between real objects or material subjects (which reads to me like the empirical versus the transcendental levels in disguise). Since the time allowed for papers will be short I'll try to make four general points on the following themes:
* the-more-than-human world (hat tip to the ecologist/critical animal crowd - more-than-human world is the ecological term for precisely that).
* flat-even ontology and how it reconciles itself with both 'levels' (here I will talk a little bit about Nicolai Hartmann and his four levels of reality)
* the absolute and what it means for us today (the operative realm and the question of activity)
* Finally I will try to throw in some ideas on the objet petit a, the Hegelian-Lacanian roots of Zizekian ontology, and see what flows from this.
Looking forward to seeing you all there.
Phenomenology and the Ancestral
In this paper I will attempt to address the implications for
phenomenology raised by Quentin Meillassoux’s argument from
ancestrality as outlined in Après la finitude (2006). The argument
from ancestrality raises the aporia of the arche-fossil, a fossil that
indicates to a time anterior to givenness, and allows empirical
science to make realist claims about events anterior to life. Arguing
that correlationist thinking, that is any thinking that stresses the
correlation between thought and being, Meillassoux challenges
phenomenology to address the ‘time before being’ raising once again
the seemingly irreconcilable problem of the empirical and
transcendental levels. Recognizing that the crux of the issue for
Meillassoux is whether ancestral statements are either literal or
realist I will attempt to reach, with the tools of speculative
realism, an operative realm of activity that allows one to think about
the ancestral realm in its realist sense.
Of course this is similar to the paper I have here in Dublin but by March it will be radically different. I intend to address the extent to which one must decide between real objects or material subjects (which reads to me like the empirical versus the transcendental levels in disguise). Since the time allowed for papers will be short I'll try to make four general points on the following themes:
* the-more-than-human world (hat tip to the ecologist/critical animal crowd - more-than-human world is the ecological term for precisely that).
* flat-even ontology and how it reconciles itself with both 'levels' (here I will talk a little bit about Nicolai Hartmann and his four levels of reality)
* the absolute and what it means for us today (the operative realm and the question of activity)
* Finally I will try to throw in some ideas on the objet petit a, the Hegelian-Lacanian roots of Zizekian ontology, and see what flows from this.
Looking forward to seeing you all there.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Responses Owed
I owe a lot of people responses (e-mail, blog posts or otherwise) and I'm just posting here that I'll get back asap as I try to organize things a little better. I suppose it is good to have a busy email inbox but I spent the day at a family event and fell behind a little. In our super-fast-based Gestell existence what a difference a day can make!
Oh and although I won't get to it tomorrow response wise here is an insightful post by Levi (with excellent comments/debate) that deals with my previous post on animals.
Oh and although I won't get to it tomorrow response wise here is an insightful post by Levi (with excellent comments/debate) that deals with my previous post on animals.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Animals
So I promised scu I would address the theme of animals that turned up in the paper on Monday (I'm just waiting to confirm whether I can post it - it is derived from a paper I am submitting so I just need to make sure). There is not much to it but animals did seem to crop up more than a few times.
One argument was that anti-correlationism has a deflationary effect on the special status usually assigned to humans by continental thinkers such as Hegel and Heidegger. The anti-correltionist stance shows that such a status is a fabrication or at least not as evident as usually portrayed. This is one way to open up the critical animal debate.
Another argument that cropped up was the effect of Darwin on who constitutes a subject. Since neither Hegel nor Heidegger discuss Darwin much it is possible they had not yet felt something we now take for granted i.e. our status as evolutionary animals. I noted that Husserl at least does mention evolution in the Logical Investigations suggesting that it must have factored into his thinking somehow (I suspect as a strong case of the natural attitude at work). This is no longer tenable since our knowledge (accepting the anti-correlationist overture to empirical science in Meillassoux i.e. one should learn to accept the knowledge derived from ES in some way) of these processes is pretty persuasive and feeds into our idea how how we moved from 'unconsciousness' to consciousness (Dennett et al).
Finally since animals seem to display some kind of reduced intentionality of their own this can also be employed for the critical animal cause.
I am not sure how new these insights are since I know both Deleuze and Derrida have discussed animals so I am taking it that I am just repeating old knowledge but for what it is worth!
One argument was that anti-correlationism has a deflationary effect on the special status usually assigned to humans by continental thinkers such as Hegel and Heidegger. The anti-correltionist stance shows that such a status is a fabrication or at least not as evident as usually portrayed. This is one way to open up the critical animal debate.
Another argument that cropped up was the effect of Darwin on who constitutes a subject. Since neither Hegel nor Heidegger discuss Darwin much it is possible they had not yet felt something we now take for granted i.e. our status as evolutionary animals. I noted that Husserl at least does mention evolution in the Logical Investigations suggesting that it must have factored into his thinking somehow (I suspect as a strong case of the natural attitude at work). This is no longer tenable since our knowledge (accepting the anti-correlationist overture to empirical science in Meillassoux i.e. one should learn to accept the knowledge derived from ES in some way) of these processes is pretty persuasive and feeds into our idea how how we moved from 'unconsciousness' to consciousness (Dennett et al).
Finally since animals seem to display some kind of reduced intentionality of their own this can also be employed for the critical animal cause.
I am not sure how new these insights are since I know both Deleuze and Derrida have discussed animals so I am taking it that I am just repeating old knowledge but for what it is worth!
Paper by Stephen Cadwell
I'll get to posting my own paper later but here is a paper from fellow UCD PhD student Stephen Cadwell on aesthetics: link.
As you can see our philosophy society is very austere and insists on the highest standards when advertising talks.
The paper was a definite success and I even managed to pose a question which is something I almost never do.
As you can see our philosophy society is very austere and insists on the highest standards when advertising talks.
The paper was a definite success and I even managed to pose a question which is something I almost never do.
Development
This will be my final post on object oriented philosophy. From now on this blog will deal only with my own work. Speculations will also take a new direction. I will be informing contributors about what this entails. If you need more information email me directly as I do not wish to cause any commotion in the blogosphere.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Speculative Realism out in the world
I delivered my first explicitly speculative realist/object oriented paper on Monday and it was an interesting experience. It was nice, for once, to be taking about a subject that appealed across lines. Of course it is always difficult to know what people really think about your paper but I think it went well albeit I found that I had overlooked certain themes. For one the ancestral realm and the arche-fossils are not ideas people take on board easily. If you are giving a paper on Meillassoux make sure to define clearly what he means by these terms. It is also clear that for many people the speculative realist approach reads like a running together of philosophy and empirical science. I found that for the audience this was the theme they picked up or at least that they identified with.
I probably invited this reading by reading out a short appendix (typed up an hour before the talk) that was rather polemical but I think the paper ended better with this. People seemed fine with Harman and object oriented philosophy and I had no bemused questions there at all meaning, I think, that many people are happy to play around with the tool-analysis and that most people are happy to see a deflated Heidegger (although I did make sure to inform people that Heidegger remains my favourite thinker).
Other themes I drew from the experience is deep time itself. Darwin popped up of course and I found it hard to explain that I was not arguing for a phenomenology of the ancestral since this is obviously impossible. This has more to do with people being familiar with me as someone who works on phenomenology though.
Amusingly I found myself stating that I wanted to reverse Wittgenstein’s ‘that which we cannot speak of’ so that we work the other way towards ‘the world is all that is the case’. I think this will become my Zizekian repeated anecdote as it seems to capture something about my intentions. I also found myself stating that Heidegger’s widening of the brackets was an opening in the wrong direction. This is clearly the influence of Harman coming in! (I’m reading GM closely so I’m sympathetic too to the carnal phenomenologists these days).
Others things that cropped up and that I felt I didn’t answer properly are dialectical materialism, animals (yes critical animal it came up more than once which is good!), and realism/anti-realism which I clearly need to work on via the analytic tradition. All in all I think speculative realism is appealing to people in some way although it will require hard work to drive home its central points. This, I think, will be one of the more important things I need to come to terms with.
I probably invited this reading by reading out a short appendix (typed up an hour before the talk) that was rather polemical but I think the paper ended better with this. People seemed fine with Harman and object oriented philosophy and I had no bemused questions there at all meaning, I think, that many people are happy to play around with the tool-analysis and that most people are happy to see a deflated Heidegger (although I did make sure to inform people that Heidegger remains my favourite thinker).
Other themes I drew from the experience is deep time itself. Darwin popped up of course and I found it hard to explain that I was not arguing for a phenomenology of the ancestral since this is obviously impossible. This has more to do with people being familiar with me as someone who works on phenomenology though.
Amusingly I found myself stating that I wanted to reverse Wittgenstein’s ‘that which we cannot speak of’ so that we work the other way towards ‘the world is all that is the case’. I think this will become my Zizekian repeated anecdote as it seems to capture something about my intentions. I also found myself stating that Heidegger’s widening of the brackets was an opening in the wrong direction. This is clearly the influence of Harman coming in! (I’m reading GM closely so I’m sympathetic too to the carnal phenomenologists these days).
Others things that cropped up and that I felt I didn’t answer properly are dialectical materialism, animals (yes critical animal it came up more than once which is good!), and realism/anti-realism which I clearly need to work on via the analytic tradition. All in all I think speculative realism is appealing to people in some way although it will require hard work to drive home its central points. This, I think, will be one of the more important things I need to come to terms with.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Continental versus X
On a related note it is about time we in the continental camp stopped referring to the phantom called analytic philosophy. The plain fact of the matter is that it does not exist any more. Whatever the other camp is today it is not concerned with language analysis alone but metaphysics *seriously!*, mind, cognitive science & logic itself - whether that is a question regarding the status of conceptual thinking or not.
Although I remain convinced that philosophy has its greatest expression in the reverse conceptual 'analysis' of continental thinking (analytic conceptual analysis has too limited a focus when it comes to what is deemed phenomena: trees are not just the content of propositions or sense-data) I think there is much to learn from the de-centred subjectivity offered to us by the likes of Dennett. The thing I am finding hardest to express is how traditionally continental notions (such as the absolute) are not dissolved via the new lessons brought to us by empirical science. Rather one must work out whether these notions, once intuitive perhaps, still flow necessarily (deduction remains here our process no?). This is why I remain within fascinated by the second beginning of German idealism and its second spark in phenomenology. Something was touched on that seems resilient. My next task is to discover the nature of this allure.
Although I remain convinced that philosophy has its greatest expression in the reverse conceptual 'analysis' of continental thinking (analytic conceptual analysis has too limited a focus when it comes to what is deemed phenomena: trees are not just the content of propositions or sense-data) I think there is much to learn from the de-centred subjectivity offered to us by the likes of Dennett. The thing I am finding hardest to express is how traditionally continental notions (such as the absolute) are not dissolved via the new lessons brought to us by empirical science. Rather one must work out whether these notions, once intuitive perhaps, still flow necessarily (deduction remains here our process no?). This is why I remain within fascinated by the second beginning of German idealism and its second spark in phenomenology. Something was touched on that seems resilient. My next task is to discover the nature of this allure.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Work in Progress Paper Monday 25th Jan.
For those of you in Dublin here is my abstract for the work-in-progress paper I'll be delivering at the UCD-Trinity work-in-progress seminars on Monday 25th January at 6 pm, in the seminar room (philosophy department) of Trinity College. [If you cannot find the philosophy department just ask one of the students floating around the Arts building].
Title: Phenomenology and the Ancestral
In this paper I will attempt to address the implications for
phenomenology raised by Quentin Meillassoux’s argument from
ancestrality as outlined in Après la finitude (2006). The argument
from ancestrality raises the aporia of the arche-fossil, a fossil that
indicates to a time anterior to givenness, and allows empirical
science to make realist claims about events anterior to life. Arguing
against correlationist thinking, that is any thinking that stresses
the correlation between thought and being, Meillassoux challenges
phenomenology to address the ‘time before being’ raising once again
the seemingly irreconcilable problem of the empirical and
transcendental levels. Recognizing that the crux of the issue for
Meillassoux is whether ancestral statements are either literal or
realist I will attempt to reach, via Heidegger’s tool analysis, a
space of real objects called the operative realm that allows one to
think about the ancestral realm in its realist sense.
Title: Phenomenology and the Ancestral
In this paper I will attempt to address the implications for
phenomenology raised by Quentin Meillassoux’s argument from
ancestrality as outlined in Après la finitude (2006). The argument
from ancestrality raises the aporia of the arche-fossil, a fossil that
indicates to a time anterior to givenness, and allows empirical
science to make realist claims about events anterior to life. Arguing
against correlationist thinking, that is any thinking that stresses
the correlation between thought and being, Meillassoux challenges
phenomenology to address the ‘time before being’ raising once again
the seemingly irreconcilable problem of the empirical and
transcendental levels. Recognizing that the crux of the issue for
Meillassoux is whether ancestral statements are either literal or
realist I will attempt to reach, via Heidegger’s tool analysis, a
space of real objects called the operative realm that allows one to
think about the ancestral realm in its realist sense.
anotherheideggerblog on tour part II
So I'll be giving a paper at the Real Objects or Material Subjects Conference 2010 in Dundee. Not sure what the title is yet but I'll think of one over the weekend. Here is the abstract:
''This paper has three aims: to situate object oriented ontology in its phenomenological background and discern whether Harman has successfully managed to bypass the ‘overcoming of metaphysics’, secondly it will address the charge of anti-humanism levelled against object oriented ontology, and thirdly it will attempt to perform an ‘act’ of object oriented ontology (with an emphasis on how space is seen in such an analysis). I will be examining Harman’s ‘Heideggerian’ background in particular his earliest development of object oriented ontology as it emerges from his engagement with the tool-analysis in Tool-Being (2002). I will attempt to show that rather than being a facile reading of Heidegger that reduces Heidegger’s thinking down to one simple idea Harman achieves something much different and certainly more radical. I will argue that in Tool-Being Harman pushes through Heidegger’s emphasis on the ontological difference toward our technological world in such a manner that we come to see that what is required is not the ‘overcoming of metaphysics’ but more metaphysics. My defence against the charge of anti-humanism will not seek to tease out the ethical dimension to object oriented ontology but precisely to show that, like the explicit nihilism of disenchantment in Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound or the subtle nihilism of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude, object oriented ontology is a necessarily nihilistic project. It is in this nihilism that one truly opens the path to an overcoming of metaphysics. In the final part I turn my attention to the positive content of object oriented ontology in its more developed guise as ‘continental metaphysics’ by focusing on the unpublished essays by Harman on causation, space, and time with an emphasis on Harman’s metaphysics of spatiality. I end with the results from my own object oriented analysis and ask whether such an analysis is, as yet, possible.''
Of course I can't promise the paper will have exactly this content but it'll be along these lines and is, clearly, a defense of Harman's position coming down on the side of real objects. I'm happy to be attending and since Fabio of hypertiling and Nick from Speculative Heresy will also be there so we should have a bit of an SR crew. Is anybody else coming? Of course it'll also be a chance for many of us to finally meet Harman and engage with the material subjects.
''This paper has three aims: to situate object oriented ontology in its phenomenological background and discern whether Harman has successfully managed to bypass the ‘overcoming of metaphysics’, secondly it will address the charge of anti-humanism levelled against object oriented ontology, and thirdly it will attempt to perform an ‘act’ of object oriented ontology (with an emphasis on how space is seen in such an analysis). I will be examining Harman’s ‘Heideggerian’ background in particular his earliest development of object oriented ontology as it emerges from his engagement with the tool-analysis in Tool-Being (2002). I will attempt to show that rather than being a facile reading of Heidegger that reduces Heidegger’s thinking down to one simple idea Harman achieves something much different and certainly more radical. I will argue that in Tool-Being Harman pushes through Heidegger’s emphasis on the ontological difference toward our technological world in such a manner that we come to see that what is required is not the ‘overcoming of metaphysics’ but more metaphysics. My defence against the charge of anti-humanism will not seek to tease out the ethical dimension to object oriented ontology but precisely to show that, like the explicit nihilism of disenchantment in Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound or the subtle nihilism of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude, object oriented ontology is a necessarily nihilistic project. It is in this nihilism that one truly opens the path to an overcoming of metaphysics. In the final part I turn my attention to the positive content of object oriented ontology in its more developed guise as ‘continental metaphysics’ by focusing on the unpublished essays by Harman on causation, space, and time with an emphasis on Harman’s metaphysics of spatiality. I end with the results from my own object oriented analysis and ask whether such an analysis is, as yet, possible.''
Of course I can't promise the paper will have exactly this content but it'll be along these lines and is, clearly, a defense of Harman's position coming down on the side of real objects. I'm happy to be attending and since Fabio of hypertiling and Nick from Speculative Heresy will also be there so we should have a bit of an SR crew. Is anybody else coming? Of course it'll also be a chance for many of us to finally meet Harman and engage with the material subjects.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Speculative Realism Reading Group
''Speculative Realism Reading Group
Nottingham Trent University will present its third reading group on Speculative Realism on Jan 27th, in Room 215 of the George Eliot at 1pm. The reading for this session will be Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound.
Contact: patrick.oconnor@ntu.ac.uk''
I mentioned before that I am jealous that no such group exists here (and I would start my own but interest in SR in Ireland is non-existent to be honest). Nihil Unbound is a hardcore book to boot. Brassier's ability to weave together contemporary continental thinking is pretty damn impressive. Get there if you can!
Nottingham Trent University will present its third reading group on Speculative Realism on Jan 27th, in Room 215 of the George Eliot at 1pm. The reading for this session will be Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound.
Contact: patrick.oconnor@ntu.ac.uk''
I mentioned before that I am jealous that no such group exists here (and I would start my own but interest in SR in Ireland is non-existent to be honest). Nihil Unbound is a hardcore book to boot. Brassier's ability to weave together contemporary continental thinking is pretty damn impressive. Get there if you can!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Kauffmann
Peter talks a little bit about here.
I have to agree. Kauffmann's Nietzsche translation collection was the first book I read in philosophy. I wanted to read the AntiChrist because, as a good Irish boy, I was still trapped with all that Catholic guilt. The decision to pick that book up is, looking back on it, perhaps the most influential decisions I ever made on the direction of my life. Not only did it convince that there was some type of philosophy I might be able to talk about in class, but it also connected me to a brutally honest way of thinking that I'd never imagined existed in published form. It might sound trite to say this now but the book actually convinced me that Christianity was a lie. You can return to it again with a more acute eye and maturity but 'hanging out' around the abyss is good stuff at 18.
Plus it nearly gave my poor mother a heart-attack when she found it in my bag. I tried to explain to her that Nietzsche was being ironic!
I have to agree. Kauffmann's Nietzsche translation collection was the first book I read in philosophy. I wanted to read the AntiChrist because, as a good Irish boy, I was still trapped with all that Catholic guilt. The decision to pick that book up is, looking back on it, perhaps the most influential decisions I ever made on the direction of my life. Not only did it convince that there was some type of philosophy I might be able to talk about in class, but it also connected me to a brutally honest way of thinking that I'd never imagined existed in published form. It might sound trite to say this now but the book actually convinced me that Christianity was a lie. You can return to it again with a more acute eye and maturity but 'hanging out' around the abyss is good stuff at 18.
Plus it nearly gave my poor mother a heart-attack when she found it in my bag. I tried to explain to her that Nietzsche was being ironic!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Speculations News
Looks like Issue 1 will have some additional submissions. Chris Vitale, Asst. Professor (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY) will be submitting an article called 'Networkologies - A Manifesto'. I think this is a pretty cool little development and gives a sense as to how object oriented ontologies influence is spreading out into interesting directions.
Fabio (of hypertiling) and fellow editor of Speculations will be writing a short paper on the timeliness of SR/OOP (title to be decided).
Art will be provided by 2ndFade. Artist Thomas Gokey will be acting as our chief designer promising a bunch of innovative formats (Kindle, print-on-demand and maybe a surprise or two...).
This is on top of our papers from Graham Harman, Levi Byrant, Ian Bogost, Reid Kane, Ben Woodard, and Michael Austin.
I've been amazed at the response especially from artists and those in the digital/media/film/cultural departments (some of whom have promised papers for later issues). Also OOO seems to be well known in literary departments too (including those working in rhetoric and communication).
Fabio (of hypertiling) and fellow editor of Speculations will be writing a short paper on the timeliness of SR/OOP (title to be decided).
Art will be provided by 2ndFade. Artist Thomas Gokey will be acting as our chief designer promising a bunch of innovative formats (Kindle, print-on-demand and maybe a surprise or two...).
This is on top of our papers from Graham Harman, Levi Byrant, Ian Bogost, Reid Kane, Ben Woodard, and Michael Austin.
I've been amazed at the response especially from artists and those in the digital/media/film/cultural departments (some of whom have promised papers for later issues). Also OOO seems to be well known in literary departments too (including those working in rhetoric and communication).
Update
I haven't posted in a while because things have been piling up. I have a work-in-progress paper coming up so I've been hacking up my dissertation for choice cuts (editing is not a million miles away from mixing music...). I'll post the abstract closer to the date. Anyone in Dublin should come along if only to berate me from some whopping oversight (it will be in Trinity College, Dublin and not my home University College Dublin - as part of the Dublin Philosophy program which I should write about). On top of this I'm submitting the complete fully edited first chapter at the end of the month (my thesis has only three chapters of which the second is more or less complete as well). Then there are the proofs of Post-Continental Voices to submit...and a few other small things. On the plus side I've sent off a torrent of abstracts for conferences and one is confirmed (Nordic Society for Phenomenology April 2010) which Malpas [one of the interviewees and a major influence on my work] will be at and I'm hoping I'll get a chance to meet him in person. I want to go to Dundee as well and am hoping my submission for that gets accepted although I can't be sure what is happening there. I also need to find some speakers for the Heidegger conference in UCD this year. It will be called Twenty First Century Heidegger for those interested.
I've also committed myself to submitting a few papers and smaller projects but I must admit that I intentionally extend myself like this because not having anything to do is the first position to be in! Like Critical Animal I'm hoping to submit this year and will be looking for positions (a post-doc I hope) at some point.
Blogwise I'll get something down here soon. I'm giving an overview of Meillassoux's After Finitude at the Trinity - UCD inter departmental reading group at some point and I'll post up my notes. Plus once I'll be posting more on Harman and SR with the We Have Never Been Blogging crew and the overspill will go here.
I've also committed myself to submitting a few papers and smaller projects but I must admit that I intentionally extend myself like this because not having anything to do is the first position to be in! Like Critical Animal I'm hoping to submit this year and will be looking for positions (a post-doc I hope) at some point.
Blogwise I'll get something down here soon. I'm giving an overview of Meillassoux's After Finitude at the Trinity - UCD inter departmental reading group at some point and I'll post up my notes. Plus once I'll be posting more on Harman and SR with the We Have Never Been Blogging crew and the overspill will go here.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
On Translation and Heidegger
Graham and Peter have some interesting posts up on translation.
I've never translated anything for cash although I do my own dissertation translations from German to English (and hope one day to do the same for French) but I do wonder what I would do if I were allowed translate a Heidegger text. I've been plotting to provide a new translation of Art and Space for my dissertation's appendix. There are certain words that I would plain translate ruthlessly against Heideggerian dogma.
For example Gelassenheit is sometimes bafflingly translated as 'releasement' or 'letting-be' as if these were somehow terms that helped one grasp the Heideggerian meaning. Let us be straight here; nothing is clarified by this translation. Why not go with calm or serenity? Too Buddhist? Too close to the quietism at the heart of the later Heidegger (Nicht-Wollen already gave it away...). Worse still letting be makes Heidegger sound Amish (yes they use it for the same sense).
Ereignis...here Heidegger complicates matters himself but I think the simple words 'happening' or 'occurrence' work fine for the casual reader as long as one includes an important explanatory footnote for more serious readers. Academic readers will, or should, know what the German entails and why the word is problematic. No need to litter the text with the unseemly 'event of appropriation'.
I've never translated anything for cash although I do my own dissertation translations from German to English (and hope one day to do the same for French) but I do wonder what I would do if I were allowed translate a Heidegger text. I've been plotting to provide a new translation of Art and Space for my dissertation's appendix. There are certain words that I would plain translate ruthlessly against Heideggerian dogma.
For example Gelassenheit is sometimes bafflingly translated as 'releasement' or 'letting-be' as if these were somehow terms that helped one grasp the Heideggerian meaning. Let us be straight here; nothing is clarified by this translation. Why not go with calm or serenity? Too Buddhist? Too close to the quietism at the heart of the later Heidegger (Nicht-Wollen already gave it away...). Worse still letting be makes Heidegger sound Amish (yes they use it for the same sense).
Ereignis...here Heidegger complicates matters himself but I think the simple words 'happening' or 'occurrence' work fine for the casual reader as long as one includes an important explanatory footnote for more serious readers. Academic readers will, or should, know what the German entails and why the word is problematic. No need to litter the text with the unseemly 'event of appropriation'.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Speculations mini-CFP
I've just been browsing the archives over at the International Journal of Zizek Studies and in the earlier issues they have quite a lot of interviews, and short irreverent pieces.
If anyone is interested in putting together something short like this do let me know. I suppose the kind of thing I'm looking for are interviews, opinion pieces (the IJZS has some amazing rant-papers that buck academic formality), manifestos or something completely different.
If anyone is interested in putting together something short like this do let me know. I suppose the kind of thing I'm looking for are interviews, opinion pieces (the IJZS has some amazing rant-papers that buck academic formality), manifestos or something completely different.
In Response to 'The Will to -ism'
In response to this post I just wanted to make some points.
The first is that Speculations is primarily an object oriented philosophy journal. Although the word speculations is in the title my intention was to capture the object oriented attitude which is speculative in all its forms: object oriented philosophy (Harman), object oriented ontology (Byrant) and alien phenomenology (Bogost).
The journal recognizes that speculative realism is more or less dead but that being said we are happy to publish papers from the remaining speculative realist offshoots. Whatever the fate of that movement, and I never had much to do with it personally, it is clear that a bunch of people got to know one another under its brief spell and I see no reason why one should not at least recognize this as a kind of wellspring.
This being the case there really isn't an -ism to promote and even if one could be said to be attaching themselves to an -ism it remains such a tiny group that I think this banding together is something more than a mere will to -ism. Nobody puts object oriented philosophy down on their CV as a specialist area because nobody knows much about object oriented philosophy.
This is the point of the journal.
It is not the case that one has found a popular -ism to belong to but rather than one has, for good or ill, found an -ism that is not popular and the journal exists to let people know that this form of philosophy exists. It is the exact opposite process of starting a Deleuze (or Zizek) journal where one knows that people will flock to you. Our journal works on the basis that we have no laurels to rest on and so we cannot rely on mainstream journals to publish our work since, to put it directly, they do not even know what we are doing yet.
This is the point of the journal.
Nor is this the Journal of Harman Studies or I would have called it so. The first issue includes three position papers from three object oriented thinkers who will be advocating three different variations on the general object oriented attitude - with a nod to Graham for inaugurating this approach but no slavish dissecting of his work for tidbits a la the Heideggerian world (Heidegger has no journal and yet Zizek does so what does this mean for the point about the Deleuze journal?). That is not even mentioning the critical papers which will also be appearing in the first issue.
If an -ism is a will to a master then, as Lacan stated, we will get our masters. We all know this. This is precisely the discourse of contemporary continental philosophy. It is the dogma of contemporary thinkers. Do nothing for you know not what you do. The object oriented attitude operates under the assumption that this will to inactivity is the Big Other for subject oriented philosophy.
Precisely who is it that is stopping you from starting a Deleuze journal? In our age of open access online journals one can no longer pretend that the barriers are too high, the proper 'accolades' have not been granted (by who precisely?), and one is bound to end up in the realm of dogmatism etc.
Rather than engagement one is supposed to adopt a vague, open-minded position wherein nothing is ventured.
I think Ian Bogost said it best when he said Enough!
The first is that Speculations is primarily an object oriented philosophy journal. Although the word speculations is in the title my intention was to capture the object oriented attitude which is speculative in all its forms: object oriented philosophy (Harman), object oriented ontology (Byrant) and alien phenomenology (Bogost).
The journal recognizes that speculative realism is more or less dead but that being said we are happy to publish papers from the remaining speculative realist offshoots. Whatever the fate of that movement, and I never had much to do with it personally, it is clear that a bunch of people got to know one another under its brief spell and I see no reason why one should not at least recognize this as a kind of wellspring.
This being the case there really isn't an -ism to promote and even if one could be said to be attaching themselves to an -ism it remains such a tiny group that I think this banding together is something more than a mere will to -ism. Nobody puts object oriented philosophy down on their CV as a specialist area because nobody knows much about object oriented philosophy.
This is the point of the journal.
It is not the case that one has found a popular -ism to belong to but rather than one has, for good or ill, found an -ism that is not popular and the journal exists to let people know that this form of philosophy exists. It is the exact opposite process of starting a Deleuze (or Zizek) journal where one knows that people will flock to you. Our journal works on the basis that we have no laurels to rest on and so we cannot rely on mainstream journals to publish our work since, to put it directly, they do not even know what we are doing yet.
This is the point of the journal.
Nor is this the Journal of Harman Studies or I would have called it so. The first issue includes three position papers from three object oriented thinkers who will be advocating three different variations on the general object oriented attitude - with a nod to Graham for inaugurating this approach but no slavish dissecting of his work for tidbits a la the Heideggerian world (Heidegger has no journal and yet Zizek does so what does this mean for the point about the Deleuze journal?). That is not even mentioning the critical papers which will also be appearing in the first issue.
If an -ism is a will to a master then, as Lacan stated, we will get our masters. We all know this. This is precisely the discourse of contemporary continental philosophy. It is the dogma of contemporary thinkers. Do nothing for you know not what you do. The object oriented attitude operates under the assumption that this will to inactivity is the Big Other for subject oriented philosophy.
Precisely who is it that is stopping you from starting a Deleuze journal? In our age of open access online journals one can no longer pretend that the barriers are too high, the proper 'accolades' have not been granted (by who precisely?), and one is bound to end up in the realm of dogmatism etc.
Rather than engagement one is supposed to adopt a vague, open-minded position wherein nothing is ventured.
I think Ian Bogost said it best when he said Enough!
Friday, January 8, 2010
Zizek the idealist
EDIT: Mike Nanopoulos e-mailed to tell me that the The Truth of Zizek has an essay by Grant on the Zizek/Schelling relationship called 'The Insufficiency of Ground: On Zizek's Schellingianism'. [Also worth checking out some of the readers comments for kicks].
Just rummaging through Graham's classic OOP posts and came across this:
''praising Tool-Being, “writing for ants” takes the book to task for misunderstanding Lacan (though I was writing about Zizek, not Lacan, and still hold to my critique of Zizek as an idealist).''
I would have figured that it was pretty obvious Zizek is not only an idealist but a self-professed defender of the speculative German idealist tradition - perhaps its strongest contemporary defender (certainly the most popular). If your two main influences are Hegel and Lacan then its a safe wager you are an idealist. Both Hegel and Lacan offer readings of the subject wherein the subject externalizes itself and draws a circle around the world. Hegel envelopes the in-itself as what is thought as in-itself for self-consciousness and the Lacanian Real, although it is certainly the gritty real of nature/material it can also be that which is too real (for the subject)- planes flying into the twin towers is an intrusion of the Real for Americans, belongs to the three orders that consitute the nexus of subjecthood.
In fact in Zizek's reading of Schelling in The Invisible Remainder one finds almost no evidence of Schelling's naturphilosophie. I always wondered what Grant makes of Zizek since Philosophies of Nature After Schelling works immensely hard to restore Schelling as a kind of lost link to physics/the physical/phusis.
Just rummaging through Graham's classic OOP posts and came across this:
''praising Tool-Being, “writing for ants” takes the book to task for misunderstanding Lacan (though I was writing about Zizek, not Lacan, and still hold to my critique of Zizek as an idealist).''
I would have figured that it was pretty obvious Zizek is not only an idealist but a self-professed defender of the speculative German idealist tradition - perhaps its strongest contemporary defender (certainly the most popular). If your two main influences are Hegel and Lacan then its a safe wager you are an idealist. Both Hegel and Lacan offer readings of the subject wherein the subject externalizes itself and draws a circle around the world. Hegel envelopes the in-itself as what is thought as in-itself for self-consciousness and the Lacanian Real, although it is certainly the gritty real of nature/material it can also be that which is too real (for the subject)- planes flying into the twin towers is an intrusion of the Real for Americans, belongs to the three orders that consitute the nexus of subjecthood.
In fact in Zizek's reading of Schelling in The Invisible Remainder one finds almost no evidence of Schelling's naturphilosophie. I always wondered what Grant makes of Zizek since Philosophies of Nature After Schelling works immensely hard to restore Schelling as a kind of lost link to physics/the physical/phusis.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
On Revolution. απολογία
I'm quite intrigued to see the discussion going on between Mark/Graham, and Reid. Not only because it includes three excellent thinkers but because it raises a bunch of fascinating issues from the age-old 'are academics leftists just phonies' to 'is object oriented thinking a kind of closeted liberalism'...
As readers may be aware Capitalist Realism had a pretty strong effect on me. Fisher manages to cut through the tiresome language of academic leftism without losing its commendable commitment to social change. It is also the first book in a long time where I recognize the people under diagnosis. It is the first book where I see my generation and the one just below it staring back at me earphones in tact and iphone at the ready. It lets the pure background of disengagement come into focus. It is an important book and Zizek is right that it is "the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have!" When Zizek says that that you pay attention!
[My only critique is that Fisher does not allow the subtext of German idealism to emerge - something I'd like to see more of when people borrow from Zizek as Fisher does. Like many others Fisher presents us with the Lacanian Zizek and allows the three orders to be put into effect without weighing us down with tortuous Lacanian jargon. Perhaps the German idealist background would simply feel too heavy in a book like this.]
Now if I'm right the preeminent theme of contemporary post-continental thinking is capital. Capital presents us with an ethical dilemma. If one accepts capital and the coordinates of neoliberal society then one, whether this is conscious or not, accepts the violence committed in the name of capital. The importance of this insight is to shift attention away from the liberal emphasis on social issues which ignore this economic dimension which is the proper source for [strong] violence (identity politics, tolerance, multiculturalism). These are new seas to me so sorry for the shaky overview.
The reason I like this critique is that it highlights a certain academic embarrassment with economic Marxism. Like the soft left which disassociated itself from revolutionary Marxists during McCarthyism cultural Marxism finds a safe ground in the midst of academia where ones commitment is always partial and never costly. Of course there is nothing new about this in form - academics have always been considered somewhat out-of-touch and all too often intelligence is equated with political naivety.
What is interesting about Zizek is that he posits once again the possibility that capitalism is not the end of history. This now familiar Zizekian approach is rather startling - it is Zizek after all who reminded us that ideology remains and although ideology is now common intellectual currency it seemed quite possible for a while that post-ideological might have been the perfect moniker for our times.
I would also add that Graham's claims about those calling for revolution seem a little off. For one there is almost a constant cloud of cautiousness that hangs over leftism today and Badiou, for one, does not push for a classic revolution but something like carving out autonomous spaces - zones within capital but resistant to it nonetheless. Zizek rightly sees this as impossible. Capitalism has no appetite for competition. It'll gobble up anything that reeks of defiance and sell it back to you. You have 'to go to the end' as Zizek likes to say. Grab power. Get your hands dirty and maybe even compromise a little on the idealistic side of things (become the Symbolic, the name of the Father?).
There is also always the issue of in-fighting. Sometimes the left envelopes its own rather too easily rather than, and here one can learn something from capitalism, becoming a hybrid itself and attacking on all fronts. The quest for the perfect system is an impossible dream and the intransigent Trotskyite 'mainstream' [relative to academia] parties are truly problematic in this regard (setting up fronts, membership numbers, newspapers nobody wants to read above all else etc.)
One can always, and here I admit to a fondness for classical Marxism over contemporary Marxism, allow capital not to eat others but to eat itself. Zizek locates the genetic material of DM in Schelling - in the Weltalter where God purges himself from himself (in the sense of the Imaginary order - separation - self-differentiation a al Hegel) because God, like all subjects, is a little but mad. The cultural Marxist diagnosis of capitalist society as also a little bit mad, riven from the inside, torn from within etc., does seem today to be showing signs of fruition: ecological, financial and social.
I suppose the remaining question is rather simple: why Marxism? Well for one there is no other choice according to the anti-capital ethos of contemporary academia. Until an alternative arrives we have no better diagnosis.
Yet this is precisely where imagination enters the picture. Graham's hints at boredom regarding the contemporary world might just be the key. We have to avoid telling the people they are bored and certainly stop boring them. How to do this extends well beyond my imagination.
As readers may be aware Capitalist Realism had a pretty strong effect on me. Fisher manages to cut through the tiresome language of academic leftism without losing its commendable commitment to social change. It is also the first book in a long time where I recognize the people under diagnosis. It is the first book where I see my generation and the one just below it staring back at me earphones in tact and iphone at the ready. It lets the pure background of disengagement come into focus. It is an important book and Zizek is right that it is "the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have!" When Zizek says that that you pay attention!
[My only critique is that Fisher does not allow the subtext of German idealism to emerge - something I'd like to see more of when people borrow from Zizek as Fisher does. Like many others Fisher presents us with the Lacanian Zizek and allows the three orders to be put into effect without weighing us down with tortuous Lacanian jargon. Perhaps the German idealist background would simply feel too heavy in a book like this.]
Now if I'm right the preeminent theme of contemporary post-continental thinking is capital. Capital presents us with an ethical dilemma. If one accepts capital and the coordinates of neoliberal society then one, whether this is conscious or not, accepts the violence committed in the name of capital. The importance of this insight is to shift attention away from the liberal emphasis on social issues which ignore this economic dimension which is the proper source for [strong] violence (identity politics, tolerance, multiculturalism). These are new seas to me so sorry for the shaky overview.
The reason I like this critique is that it highlights a certain academic embarrassment with economic Marxism. Like the soft left which disassociated itself from revolutionary Marxists during McCarthyism cultural Marxism finds a safe ground in the midst of academia where ones commitment is always partial and never costly. Of course there is nothing new about this in form - academics have always been considered somewhat out-of-touch and all too often intelligence is equated with political naivety.
What is interesting about Zizek is that he posits once again the possibility that capitalism is not the end of history. This now familiar Zizekian approach is rather startling - it is Zizek after all who reminded us that ideology remains and although ideology is now common intellectual currency it seemed quite possible for a while that post-ideological might have been the perfect moniker for our times.
I would also add that Graham's claims about those calling for revolution seem a little off. For one there is almost a constant cloud of cautiousness that hangs over leftism today and Badiou, for one, does not push for a classic revolution but something like carving out autonomous spaces - zones within capital but resistant to it nonetheless. Zizek rightly sees this as impossible. Capitalism has no appetite for competition. It'll gobble up anything that reeks of defiance and sell it back to you. You have 'to go to the end' as Zizek likes to say. Grab power. Get your hands dirty and maybe even compromise a little on the idealistic side of things (become the Symbolic, the name of the Father?).
There is also always the issue of in-fighting. Sometimes the left envelopes its own rather too easily rather than, and here one can learn something from capitalism, becoming a hybrid itself and attacking on all fronts. The quest for the perfect system is an impossible dream and the intransigent Trotskyite 'mainstream' [relative to academia] parties are truly problematic in this regard (setting up fronts, membership numbers, newspapers nobody wants to read above all else etc.)
One can always, and here I admit to a fondness for classical Marxism over contemporary Marxism, allow capital not to eat others but to eat itself. Zizek locates the genetic material of DM in Schelling - in the Weltalter where God purges himself from himself (in the sense of the Imaginary order - separation - self-differentiation a al Hegel) because God, like all subjects, is a little but mad. The cultural Marxist diagnosis of capitalist society as also a little bit mad, riven from the inside, torn from within etc., does seem today to be showing signs of fruition: ecological, financial and social.
I suppose the remaining question is rather simple: why Marxism? Well for one there is no other choice according to the anti-capital ethos of contemporary academia. Until an alternative arrives we have no better diagnosis.
Yet this is precisely where imagination enters the picture. Graham's hints at boredom regarding the contemporary world might just be the key. We have to avoid telling the people they are bored and certainly stop boring them. How to do this extends well beyond my imagination.
Introducing the Danto Box
A fellow UCD philosophy graduate student Stephen Cadwell has just started up his own aesthetics blog with an emphasis on Arthur Danto. As all good object oriented types know 'aesthetics is first philosophy' so it is worth checking out.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Secular Ecology and its Discontents
Looks like I'm set for publishing a second book with zero albeit as sole author this time. The provisional title is 'Secular Ecology and its Discontents' and it will follow the short, concise style of the other zero books by Mark Fisher/Nina Power. The word count will come in at 25,000 words at most. I hope to submit the author ms in record time giving myself no more than two months to complete it. Since it is derived from my dissertation work this will not be as difficult as it sounds [25,000 words in PhD land loses its scariness rather quickly]. I'll post more details as things become more concrete. Post-Continental Voices was submitted a few months back so that is ticking along nicely as well.
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