Hi Lauren, I don't see any reason not to agree with what you say here!
Ian On Jun 15, 2012, at 1:29 AM, lauren.berl...@gmail.com wrote: > Hi all! > > I'm revving up for next week, but I would like to add some things to the > discussion among Ian/Michael/Jack. I hope this will be useful. (Many of you > are friends or friends-in-law, and I am showing fidelity to that by speaking > and speaking frankly.) I imagine that Patricia, having come to speak > speculative realism, will have lots to say about this discussion too. Me, I > work on affects of attachment and the ways those dynamic movements within > proximity engender forms of life--I'm on the Latour side of things, > resonating with it through Laplanchean anaclitic psychoanalysis and an > aesthetics derived from, without being orthodoxly, Spivak (unlearning), > Deleuze ([un]becoming), and Cavell (ordinary language philosophy). Or, I'm a > materialist queer writing sentences to induce some arts of transformation, > which is I think why I am here, although I've wondered about that during the > last few weeks. > > 1. Re the Bogost/Halberstam convo. > > Ian writes that "all objects equally exist, but not all objects exist > equally," and I couldn't agree more. But like Jack I think it matters to > attend to the relative impact of both clauses of this statement. If you > believe it then you have also to account for your own prioritization of > things that seem normatively to be things over things that normatively seem > to be human. As Jack points out, there's a complex political and definitional > history there. > > 2. But more interesting to me--and addressed to us all, not just Ian--why > should thinking about things in relation not be interfered with by other > idioms? Recalling Zach's entries and my own inclinations too, where does > interference (the glitch suspending the movement of the system, the noise > that proceeds within which form manifests, take your pick) make its way into > our methods, imaginaries, or concepts? Why is Jack's attention to the > history of what classes are served by disciplinary conventions deemed some > kind of threat to productive conversation? > > Those of us who write from queer/feminist/antiracist/anticolonial commitments > have debated a lot whether, how, and when it matters that some statements are > held true as though the second clause,"but not all objects exist equally," > didn't exist (this is, I think, Jack's argument against abstraction and > universalism). I like abstraction and universalism more than Jack does, but > that's because my orientation is to want more of everything. not less of some > things. I want the terms of transformation to proceed through idiomatic > extension and interruption, huge swoops and medial gestures, the internal > frottage of contradiction and irreconcilable evidence... I'm an impurist. > What are the incommensurate ways we can address the scene of that thing in a > way that changes that thing? > > As Jack writes, it matters who is cited: who we think with and the citations > that point to them build and destroy worlds, they're both media and bugs in > world-building. The clash of intellectual idioms is a political question too > because it shapes the imaginary of description and exemplification. The clash > of idioms is inconvenient, and I would like also to say that it's part of a > queer problematic represented here certainly by Zach and Michael and Jack and > me too, although I sense that where Jack and I are looking for discursive > registers that allow us to say everything we know in all the ways we know it, > Zach and Michael's fantastic written work is more likely to make arguments > in specific idioms (sometimes sounding all cultural studies, sometimes > critical theory, sometimes arguing in the modes of disciplinary philosophy) > depending on the conversation. We might also talk about polemics v > analytics. I'm less polemical than some of us here. > > I think it's important that we talk about this question of knowledge worlds > (of accessibility, of purity [high/low, > disciplinary/transdisciplinary/undisciplined/syncretic epistemologies and > idioms]), in a discussion of queer new media and of how its criticality can > operate. > > 3. Re Michael/Jack's argument about masculinism, Warner, etc. I kind of > agree with Michael and Ian that calling something masculinist (from you, > Jack, that's kind of astonishing, but of course it was a shorthand for the > elevation of abstraction over sensual life in all of its riven contestations) > is probably not too clarifying or accurate, but it is pointing to something > important, which has to do with "all objects equally exist, but not all > objects exist equally." Warner's practice has always been to posit queer as > a practice and orientation as against identity politics, which he takes to be > over-bound to the signifier (as does Edelman). My orientation has been to > attend what happens when we mix things up, or remix things up, and as I have > written collaboratively with these two guys and been cast as the vulgarer in > both cases, all I can say is it's always instructive to enter into the > affective space where some things are anchors so other things can change. > That's true for all of our practices, which is why I've spent some time here > pondering what kinds of argument have gotten bracketed or foreclosed so that > other things can seem innovative and productive... > > Ta! This is fun! > LB > > Lauren Berlant > George M. Pullman Professor > Department of English > University of Chicago > Walker Museum 413 > 1115 E. 58th. St. > Chicago IL 60637 > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ian Bogost <ian.bog...@lcc.gatech.edu> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> > Sent: Thu, Jun 14, 2012 8:50 pm > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman > > Joe, > > Thanks for these great comments. > >> I think it is because this resonance seems so fruitful to me that I am >> perplexed by some of the claims by proponents of OOO that the political can >> be separated from claims about the ontological if we are constrained in our >> own ways by our as-structures, then right from the outset we encounter the >> world of human and non-human objects as profoundly political, raising >> uncanny questions of co-existence whether we are human subjects or neutrinos >> or cypress-flames. So OOO, far from allowing us to discuss "what exists" in >> politically neutral spaces, rather radicalises the political questions of >> ecology and "being-with" into the realm of the non-human, so that all >> objects are trying to 'work out' how to exist with each other whether to >> congregate or flee, embrace or destroy, swap DNA and code sequences, or >> annex and withdraw. This doesn't prescribe a particular flavour of >> politics, but it does seem to make the political at least "equiprimordial" >> with the ontological. I'd love to hear people's responses to these thoughts >> if you have anything to share. > > > I don't think I find anything objectionable here, save the (perhaps?) implied > conclusion that objects "working out" of mutual co-existence is best called > "politics." Sure, we can call it that, words are words after all, and perhaps > it's an appropriate metaphor. After all, as you rightly say, those of us who > embrace the tool-being as a fact of all things also acknowledge the > incompleteness of this grasping of other objects. > > However, this is a very different idea than the usual one, that politics is > *our* politics, is a normative or descriptive account of human social > behavior. It's this conceit that bothers OOO, that politics-for-humans could > be taken as first philosophy. > > If I can be permitted the indulgence of quoting myself at absurd length, > here's how I attempt to address the matter in Alien Phenomenology (pp 78-79), > on the topic of ethics rather than politics: > >> Can we even imagine a speculative ethics? Could an object characterize the >> internal struggles and codes of another, simply by tracing and >> reconstructing evidence for such a code by the interactions of its >> neighbors? It’s much harder than imagining a speculative alien >> phenomenology, and it’s easy to understand why: we can find evidence for our >> speculations on perception, like radiation tracing the black hole’s event >> horizon, even if we are only ever able to characterize the resulting >> experiences as metaphors bound to human correlates. The same goes for the >> Foveon sensor, the piston, the tweet, and the soybean, which can only ever >> grasp the outside as an analogous struggle. The answer to correlationism is >> not the rejection of any correlate but the acknowledgment of endless ones, >> all self-absorbed, obsessed by givenness rather than by turpitude. The >> violence or ardor of piston and fuel is the human metaphorization of a >> phenomenon, not the ethics of an object. It is not the relationship between >> piston and fuel that we frame by ethics but our relationship to the >> relationship between piston and fuel. Of course, this can be productive: >> ethical principles can serve as a speculative characterization of object >> relations. But they are only metaphorisms, not true ethics of objects. >> >> Unless we wish to adopt a strictly Aristotelian account of causality and >> ethics, in which patterns of behavior for a certain type can be tested >> externally for compliance, access to the ethics of objects will always >> remain out of reach. It is not the problem of objectification that must >> worry us, the opinion both Martin Heidegger and Levinas hold (albeit in >> different ways). Despite the fact that Levinas claims ethics as first >> philosophy, what he gives us is not really ethics but a metaphysics of >> intersubjectivity that he gives the name “ethics.” And even then, Levinas’s >> other is always another person, not another thing, like a soybean or an >> engine cylinder (never mind the engine cylinder’s other!). Before it could >> be singled out amid the gaze of the other, the object-I would have to have >> some idea what it meant to be gazed on in the first place. Levinas >> approaches this position himself when he observes, “If one could possess, >> grasp, and know the other, it would not be other.” That is, so long as we >> don’t mind only eating one flavor of otherness. >> >> Timothy Morton observes that matters of ethics defer to an “ethereal >> beyond.” We always outsource the essence of a problem, the oil spill >> forgotten into the ocean, the human waste abandoned to the U-bend. Ethics >> seems to be a logic that lives inside of objects, inaccessible from without; >> it’s the code that endorses expectation of plumbing or the rejoinder toward >> vegetarianism. >> >> We can imagine scores of bizarro Levinases, little philosopher machines sent >> into the sensual interactions of objects like planetary rovers. Their >> mission: to characterize the internal, withdrawn subjectivities of various >> objects, by speculating on how object–object caricatures reflect possible >> codes of value and response. Object ethics, it would seem, can only ever be >> theorized once-removed, phenomenally, the parallel universes of private >> objects cradled silently in their cocoons, even while their surfaces seem to >> explode, devour, caress, or murder one another. >> >> Morton offers an alternative: a hyperobject, one massively distributed in >> space-time. The moment we try to arrest a thing, we turn it into a world >> with edges and boundaries. To the hammer everything looks like a nail. To >> the human animal, the soybean and the gasoline look inert, safe, innocuous. >> But to the soil, to the piston? Ethical judgment itself proves a >> metaphorism, an attempt to reconcile the being of one unit in terms of >> another. We mistake it for the object’s withdrawn essence. >> >> This confusion of the withdrawn and the sensual realms allows us to make >> assumptions about the bean curd and combustion engine just as we do with >> oceans and sewers, drawing them closer and farther from us based on how well >> they match our own understanding of the world. But when there is no “away,” >> no unit outside to which we can outsource virtue or wrongdoing, ethics >> itself is revealed to be a hyperobject: a massive, tangled chain of objects >> lampooning one another through weird relation, mistaking their own essences >> for that of the alien objects they encounter, exploding the very idea of >> ethics to infinity. >> >> We can imagine scores of bizarro Levinases, little philosopher machines sent >> into the sensual interactions of objects like planetary rovers. Their >> mission: to characterize the internal, withdrawn subjectivities of various >> objects, by speculating on how object–object caricatures reflect possible >> codes of value and response. Object ethics, it would seem, can only ever be >> theorized once-removed, phenomenally, the parallel universes of private >> objects cradled silently in their cocoons, even while their surfaces seem to >> explode, devour, caress, or murder one another. > > Ian > > On Jun 14, 2012, at 9:02 PM, Joe Flintham wrote: > >> Hello >> Forgive me I'm a first time poster with a long history of lurking here and a >> some-time fascination with SR/OOO, and thankyou to everyone here for an >> exciting discussion. I wanted to write something both as a way of thinking >> it through and asking the contributors about the possibility of separating >> the political from the ontological. >> >> Tim Morton recently in one of his podcast classes on OOO summarised the >> development of SR/OOO as a response to correlationism, noting that where the >> Meillassoux strand of SR admires the correlationist approach and attempts to >> ground or legitimise the correlate, OOO instead accepts the correlationist >> limit but extends it to all relations, human and non-human. Perhaps I could >> borrow from the Heidegger legacy that comes through Harman to this analysis >> and say that OOO acknowledges the 'as-structure' that characterises being, >> and radicalises it to be a feature of all relations, rather than just human >> Dasein. I encounter you *as* something, as you encounter me; the cotton >> encounters fire *as* something, just as fire encounters cotton. >> >> I therefore understand OOO not as a way to provide an ontology that is >> independent of epistemology, but as a transformation of the question of "how >> we know what is in the world" from being 'merely' a methodological problem, >> to a fundamental feature of being both an "individual" or "object" (such as >> a human, a toaster, or a quasar) as well as a component in an assemblage or >> world. Everything is interconnected, albeit while negotiating a fundamental >> inner rift in which we also encounter ourselves *as* something. Again >> following Harman and Morton's reading of y Gasset, relations are tropes >> rather than literal. >> >> In this sense the as-structure that runs through OOO thus seems to me to be >> very consonant with queer theories. No object is able to engage with other >> objects except through its own functional colouring, its own perceptual >> morphology, its own heritage and identity, whatever material or discursive >> agencies have been made to bear on that history. I understand Morton's take >> on the uncanny ecology in OOO to mean all objects confront each other >> suddenly as strangers, that we have no 'natural' categories to rely on, and >> no normative criteria to which we can appeal we can't even be certain of the >> extent to which we are either concrete individuals in our own right or >> fleeting instances playing the role of components within some larger being >> perhaps we are both both representatives of a form or type, but also >> withdrawn and thus always capable of being something else, someway else. In >> this respect it very much means that markers of the normal are awash and >> abandoned. Perhaps some of the tropes that have characterised the >> development of SR horror, the weird, anxiety resonate with the experiences >> of abjection that make queer such a powerful resource. >> >> I think it is because this resonance seems so fruitful to me that I am >> perplexed by some of the claims by proponents of OOO that the political can >> be separated from claims about the ontological if we are constrained in our >> own ways by our as-structures, then right from the outset we encounter the >> world of human and non-human objects as profoundly political, raising >> uncanny questions of co-existence whether we are human subjects or neutrinos >> or cypress-flames. So OOO, far from allowing us to discuss "what exists" in >> politically neutral spaces, rather radicalises the political questions of >> ecology and "being-with" into the realm of the non-human, so that all >> objects are trying to 'work out' how to exist with each other whether to >> congregate or flee, embrace or destroy, swap DNA and code sequences, or >> annex and withdraw. This doesn't prescribe a particular flavour of >> politics, but it does seem to make the political at least "equiprimordial" >> with the ontological. I'd love to hear people's responses to these thoughts >> if you have anything to share. >> >> Thanks, >> Joe >> >> On 14/06/2012 23:35, Robert Jackson wrote: >>> Hey All, I've been subscribing to this mailing list for a while now, so I'm >>> glad this debate is getting aired I just hope it doesn't inherit the >>> unfortunate slippage of tone that the blogosphere features typically in >>> these types of discussions. >>> >>> So, I really don't understand this criticism of OOO, which tars the >>> ontological 'equivalence' brush with capitalism or neo-liberalism. This is >>> straightforward reductionism in my eyes. There are plenty of political >>> questions which need asking. But asking the question 'what is' need not be >>> a politically contentious one. This is what SR is precisely getting away >>> from, no matter what anti-correlationist critique one advocates. >>> >>> The key issue here is sovereignty. If a current position can articulate >>> contingent surprise within an ontology that's a start (even the early zizek >>> took the correlated 'Real' has a sovereign theoretical given, to which >>> ideology conceals or masks). For my money OOO (which Levi Bryant has >>> argued), has an interesting proposition in that one could potentially argue >>> that all real objects have an ambigious sovereign inner core of surprise >>> which can never be fully articulated, by anything: whether benvolent dust >>> mite or proprietary software. This might be a starting point for discussion. >>> >>> Best >>> Rob >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> empyre forum >> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre > > _______________________________________________ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > http://www.subtle.net/empyre > _______________________________________________ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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